


Storm Warning

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Background Relationships, Fae & Fairies, Future Fic, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Pack Dynamics, The Alpha Pack, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His roommate keeps knocking on the door and saying things, words that must have an order and a meaning somewhere, in some part of the universe that isn't this one, this part where Derek is dead and Stiles didn't answer his phone and Derek is dead and <i>Derek is dead</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles wakes up on February eighteenth with his face in _The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne_ and a pounding headache, which is actually a result of his roommate's ear-splitting dubstep morning soundtrack and not any pursuing that Diarmuid or Gráinne were subjecting Stiles to until three in the morning the night before.

He's fifteen minutes late to his office hours and of course it's the one blue moon day where there's somebody actually there to see him. It's one of the freshmen from his angel class – as in, the class he teaches about angels, not a class made up of angel students, which is a thing that does not exist, ever, anywhere – and he spends an hour coaxing her into a paper topic that she didn't come up with from an episode of _Supernatural._ After that it's off to his eleven o'clock seminar, which is an Intro course on contemporary Irish and Scottish literature and thus is mostly irrelevant, so Stiles doesn't feel all that guilty about propping up in the back row and taking a nap.

He has lunch in the quad with this dude Ty, another grad student in the Spanish department whom Stiles has recently bonded with over comps-related stress nightmares. They lose track of time arguing over whether Old Spanish or Early Modern Irish is harder to learn (fuck that noise, two years in and Stiles is still convinced it was invented by aliens) and so he has to rush to meet the guest lecturer he's supposed to be showing around campus, which he didn't want to do but his adviser is a wily old man with loose moral standards, so.

By the time four o'clock rolls around Stiles is past ready for a hot date with a shower, food, and his mattress, in that order, but he still needs to pick up a few books from the library before Dr. Hobson's Intro to Irish Studies undergrad course descends on it for their midterm. His phone rings when he's buried in the stacks, earning him a dirty look from a kid studying at a nearby table, so Stiles silences it without even checking the display.

On the bus ride home, Stiles checks his phone to see one new voicemail from _Do Not Call Him!_ which is just perfect, really, freaking perfect. Because of course Derek calls just when Stiles is beginning to get over the constant urge to talk to him, think about him, call other people to talk about him, so on and so forth.

He debates whether or not he should just delete the message unheard, but Stiles isn't going to even try and kid himself on this one.

"Stiles," Derek says heavily. "I guess you're busy. That's – okay."

Stiles frowns, clapping his free hand over his other ear and straightening up in the plastic seat. Derek sounds weird – not that he isn't always a bit weird on voicemails, dude is kind of awkward when he can't express himself through threatening body language – but this is more than just the normal Derek conversational baseline, this is… _different_.

"It's not that important, I suppose. You – don't worry about it. I shouldn't have…anyway." Something cold clenches around Stiles' heart. "Take care of yourself. I really mean that. And – thanks, I guess. Yeah." Stiles hears him clear his throat, the faint tap-tap of his boot heels on some kind of concrete floor, and then the message ends.

Stiles can't think straight after that, and he gets a call from Erica two hours later. He almost doesn't answer it, because he already knows, _already_ _knows,_ but he does, he has to, and when he picks up the phone, she's already crying.

 

 

Three days, he has to himself, before his flight back to California. Three days during which Stiles turns off his phone and unplugs his laptop and sits in his room and doesn't turn on the lights. His roommate keeps knocking on the door and saying things, words that must have an order and a meaning somewhere, in some part of the universe that isn't this one, this part where Derek is dead and Stiles didn't answer his phone and Derek is dead and _Derek is_ _dead_.

He keeps thinking, weirdly, of those aviators that Derek used to wear all the time. He was always kind of possessive about certain things – but only certain ones, and not the things that Stiles would have predicted. Like he didn't really care when Isaac crushed the back bumper on his Camaro, but man, he would totally flip his shit if any of them ever touched his socks.

Or the aviators, the blue-tinted ones, that were a fixture for like, five years or something, Stiles wasn't even aware that sunglasses could last that long, jeez. They were scuffed and stretched out, and one of the lenses was scratched, and they were finally sacrificed to a scuffle with Erica that time when she tried to kill Boyd under the influence of some weird magical plant.

He doesn't know what happened to them, what Derek did with them after they were finally un-wearable. It makes him sad to think that he threw them away, because Derek always had so few things that he liked, genuinely _enjoyed,_ and he liked those sunglasses, until they broke, and now he's dead.

He feels like he's moving but he isn't, feels like he's crying but he isn't doing that either. All he's actually doing is sitting with his chest slowly caving in, like a red hot stab wound that just hurts, hurts, hurts.

 

 

He's aware he looks like a complete fucking mess when he gets off his flight, all bloodshot eyes and vodka-soaked around the edges. His dad takes one look at him and his eyes go shiny with pity, hustles him into his patrol car and keeps his hand on Stiles' forearm while he drives.

"Everyone's at Melissa's," he says quietly, driving slowly enough so that Stiles can see individual trees passing by. "You want to go? Or maybe clean up at home first?"

"Where it happened," Stiles says. "Take me there."

"Not a good idea, son," his dad says firmly.

"I'm aware," Stiles replies, leaning his forehead against the glass window. Beside him, his dad sighs heavily and flicks his turning signal on.

 

 

_Fire, it was a fire, Stiles, they fucking burned him like…Christ, we couldn't even – we didn't recognize – Isaac found him and Melissa had to sedate him he was so upset, I can't get Lydia to stop crying – Stiles please come home, we need you, oh my God –_

 

 

It's an innocuous looking part of the woods, in a valley about six miles outside of town. It's close by to this one spot where he and Lydia used to sit, on this flat sort of boulder, and they'd talk and watch the wolves run circles around each other, leaping up trees and tossing old footballs around. Sometimes Derek would join them, but usually not, usually he'd be off somewhere where nobody could see him, watching out for threats, making sure they weren't bothered.

The forest floor is scorched black in a perfect, blunt circle about eight feet wide across. Stiles stands at the edge of it and thinks about Laura's body, the spiral of wolfsbane, the first time he'd seen Derek's tattoo, the protection sigils Derek engraved into the inside door of Stiles' jeep right before he left for school, interlocking circles too smooth to have been carved by any human hand.

Stiles looks at it and thinks about how Derek was alone, how he probably looked his killer in the eye, how long he was probably still conscious, burning alive. He thinks about the fight they'd had and how he can't remember what the last things they said to each other were but that it was probably bitchy and mean and how they would've gotten over it, eventually, after they'd had some space and time, but now Stiles won't get the chance.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," he says, and he hears his father step up close behind him. "It wasn't. It's just so unfair."

His dad doesn't say anything, because what is there to say: nothing.

"It wasn't," Stiles insists, and leans back, away from the black, the place where Derek, his friend, his Alpha, his whatever, he died there. Right there, in that circle. "Fuck."

 

 

He has a panic attack on the way back to the car and his dad talks him through it, kneeling in the snow with his hands on Stiles' chest, like he's trying to keep him together. They drive home and Stiles drinks a shot of whiskey and passes out on the couch, his ankles in his dad's lap and his face buried in a Spider-Man pillow he's had since he was ten. He wakes up twice, crying, coming up for air from a nightmare that he doesn't remember and his father is there with a hand on his forehead, a blanket, another half-full tumbler. He gets four hours, maybe, and when he wakes up the world is still the same.

He watches the sunlight move across the ceiling and thinks, Derek is dead. Eats a bowl of Cheerios dry for breakfast, Derek is dead. Brushes his teeth, Derek is dead.

His dad's concern turns cloying around noon so he leaves, taking the pick-up in lieu of the patrol car, to be inconspicuous, or…something. He tries to drive to Melissa's, makes a real, actual attempt to get there, but ends up in the parking lot of the hardware store instead, calling Lydia's cell phone like a big stupid coward.

"Stiles?" She sounds rough in a way that Lydia rarely does. "Are you okay? We thought your flight was delayed or something."

And…there's the guilt. "No, I'm – can you meet me somewhere?"

There's a long, loaded silence and Stiles thinks that he might be about to get chewed out, but all she says is, "okay," and "Starbucks, twenty minutes?"

"It's on me," Stiles agrees, with no small amount of relief.

She drives up in Boyd's SUV, wearing sweats that the Lydia of old wouldn't be caught dead in anywhere, let alone in public. Her hair is pulled back from her face and she looks exhausted, with dark, bruised circles beneath her eyes that stand out even in the bright sunlight.

"Just get me an iced tea," she says, sounding irritated. "To go – I don't want to stay here. Do _you_ want to stay here?"

Stiles sees at least three different people they went to high school with inside, all of them staring unabashedly through the window, and no, he can't say that he does.

"I'm driving," she says, and rolls her window up pointedly. Some things don't change, Stiles thinks with something approaching amusement, and goes inside to get her drink.

He doesn't ask where they're going, and Lydia doesn't tell him, driving one-handed and looking comically small in the huge interior of the truck. She sucks down the iced tea in like, five minutes flat, tossing the empty cup into the backseat carelessly. Stiles bought himself a mocha, with a shot of mint, his favorite kind, but he can't take more than a couple sips of it before he abandons it in the cup holder. Everything he likes tastes like ash today.

They end up in one of the newer neighborhoods on the edge of town, pulling into a driveway that leads to a house set back behind all the rest, closer to the woods and farther away from everything else. There's a huge yard with smatterings of native weeds and plants, unkempt where all the others are well maintained. The house itself is the color of cocoa, two stories, with a huge wraparound patio and what looks like a tool shed in the back, half hidden by the timber.

"Your new place?" Stiles asks, and Lydia shakes her head.

" _Our_ new place," she replies, turning off the engine and flopping back in the seat. "Der – he bought it. Like a month ago."

Stiles stares at it, gripping the door handle. His bones feel icy, frozen solid.

"He and Erica had already started moving stuff in," Lydia continues, not even looking over at Stiles, like he's not even there. "Seven rooms. One for everybody, whenever they wanted it."

Derek, Erica, Isaac, Boyd – four. Scott and Allison, five. Lydia, when she's in town, six. And the seventh – 

"He called me," Stiles says numbly. "He left me a voicemail. That day."

Lydia whips her head around so quickly her hair flips in front of her eyes. "What?"

Stiles nods, fumbling for his phone with clumsy hands, blinking furiously. "I can't – don't tell the others, okay, I can't – here – "

Lydia covers her mouth with one hand and grasps for Stiles' hand with the other, leaning in to listen as the sound of Derek's voice fills the cab – _I guess you're busy, that's okay, it's not that important, I suppose, don't worry about it._

"Oh God," she mutters, voice clogged with tears. "He sounds – he sounds like he _knew_."

"He had to have," Stiles replies, swiping at his phone to yes, save message, of course, fucking save it. "He and his plans, he knew there was a chance, at least."

Lydia moans softly and lays her head down on the center console, over their clasped hands. Stiles leans down too, presses his forehead to her crown, breathes her shampoo, the citrus-scented lotion she uses on her hands, the faint traces of some kind of alcohol, lets himself forget, for a moment, why they're there.

"It was my fault," Lydia says softly. He can barely hear her, voice muffled into the console. "It was all my fault."

Stiles doesn't reply because there's nothing he can say to comfort her, because he almost agrees with her, in some secret, shameful part of his heart that he will never admit to. Because he thinks it's his fault too, maybe, a little.

Take care of _yourself,_ Derek had said. Not _the pack._ Stiles wonders if Derek thought there was even a difference.

 

 

_We don't know who it was, Stiles. Yes, we've looked. Lydia disappeared on Monday night and we were looking everywhere for her, but we couldn't even catch her scent, she just vanished. Derek left that morning to check out the north side of the woods again and he came back around noon, pissed off, wouldn't talk to anybody – we figured he hadn't found anything and he was frustrated. Then he left again, at two o'clock, and didn't come back, and then Lydia just_ appeared _, out of fucking_ thin air _, and Isaac went out to look for Derek, and then –_

 

 

Melissa gives him a giant hug once he finally works up the urge to go inside, leaving Lydia in the car to try and compose herself.

"Hey, Stiles," she says sadly, kissing his temple and shooing him inside. "Everyone's in the living room. We've got vodka for humans and ice cream for wolves."

Stiles feels a rush of intense, overpowering love for this woman, who is, as always, twice as strong as all of them combined. "Thanks," he says, really meaning it, more than probably ever has before. Melissa squeezes his forearm gently and gestures him into the kitchen.

"What the fuck, Stilinski," Erica says, lifting her head out of the freezer and glaring at him through red-tinged eyes. "Where have you been?"

"With Lydia," Stiles answers, confident that nobody will catch the half lie. "How's…?"

Erica slams the freezer door shut so hard the thing breaks _off._ Melissa stops dead in the doorway, rolling her eyes so hard it's almost audible.

"Jeez, you guys," she says, rushing over and glaring Erica out of the way. "I _just_ replaced this damn thing."

"Sorry, Mrs. M," Erica says, sounding genuinely contrite. This is still rare enough of an occasion that both Melissa and Stiles turn to look at her, eyes wide. "Boyd can fix that. Probably."

Melissa's expression softens. "I'll take care of it. Never mind. No – no, seriously." She waves them both away impatiently. "Go – be together. It's okay."

Stiles pulls Erica away gently and she lets him, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. She's wearing clothes that she clearly hasn't changed out of for a few days, wrinkled and streaked with dried mud. She looks strange without makeup on, like she's somehow…smaller.

"Jesus, I'm a mess. I know I'm a mess," she says, stopping abruptly in the hallway and ducking in for a sneak attack hug, burying her face in Stiles' shoulder for an intense three seconds before pulling away again. "Come on, Isaac's still kind of out of it, but Boyd and Scott are in here."

In the living room, Boyd and Scott are eating out of a giant tub of chocolate ice cream, staring at the fireplace with that same run-down, defeated look that they're all passing around like herpes. Scott stands sharply when Stiles enters the room, crossing over in two quick, long strides to catch him in a hug.

"Man," he says heavily, "oh man, Stiles. I'm so glad you're here. _Damn_."

Stiles hugs back as hard as he can, some knot of tension unraveling that he wasn't even aware existed. Scott, good old Scott, best friend Scott, still the same person who went to see the _Star Trek_ movie with him three times in a row, who hasn't changed all that much, fundamentally, even after everything.

"Yeah, me too," he says hoarsely. He catches Boyd's eye over Scott's shoulder, who nods at him gravely, hands clenched tight around his spoon.

"Don't strangle him," Erica says, flopping down in Scott's abandoned seat and scooping out a gigantic spoonful of ice cream. "He has fragile human bones."

"You're all charm," Stiles retorts, attempting to joke. It falls predictably flat.

Scott leaves Erica to the chair and flops down on the couch. After an awkward second of indecision, Stiles joins him.

"So," Boyd says. His voice sounds different than Stiles remembers. Fainter, not as _present._

"So," Stiles replies flatly. All four of them look at each other for a minute, a shared moment of _yeah, so that happened, it was fucked up, and now so are we._

"You want some vodka?" Erica asks, picking up a bottle of Skyy and waving it at Stiles enticingly. It's already open. Stiles thinks, why not, and snags it. "Not like we're gonna get much use out of it."

"Didn't stop you from trying," Boyd scolds gently, knocking his spoon against Erica's. Erica shrugs, shoveling more ice cream in her mouth. "It's good that you're here, Stiles."

"Yeah, I guess," Stiles says, taking a swig straight from the bottle. "I'm here. _Now_."

Scott scoots over, pressing his shoulder against Stiles' arm. He doesn't say anything stupid like _you couldn't have known,_ though, which Stiles appreciates. "Where's Lydia, I thought she was with you?"

"I left her in the car," Stiles says. "She wanted a minute, she was a little – "

Erica stands up, hurriedly throwing the spoon down into the half-empty carton. "Gonna go check on her," she says, pinching her eyebrows together. Boyd stands silently and follows her.

"Are they," Stiles asks, watching them go, "still. You know, whatever?"

The cool thing about Scott is that he always understands what Stiles is trying to say, even at his most incoherent. "Yeah. Seems to be working out." He shrugs. "Was Lydia okay? Where'd you guys go?"

"The new house." Scott flinches. "It's nice."

"Yeah. We haven't really – had the nerve to go, since – " Scott sighs. "We've all just been crashing here. I don't know what will happen with it, actually – the deed's in Derek's name."

"If he didn't have a will, it'll go to any living relative." Stiles takes another bracing swig from the bottle, enjoying the burn. "Which is something Derek doesn't have, so I don't know. Erica and Isaac could make a solid case to inherit his property, considering they've been living with him for so long. He was providing for them too, they could prove that, it would help, probably…" Stiles trails off, losing interest in his own train of thought. "Jesus Christ."

"I know." Scott shakes his head. "It's just so – out of nowhere. We made it through so much crap and now, like this, it just seems – "

Stiles takes another drink. A big one.

"I'm sorry," Scott says quietly.

"What," Stiles croaks. "You were the one he had some great werewolf magical bond with. He was _your_ frenemy, wasn't he?"

"More friend than enemy, lately," Scott says, with a strange kind of smile. "We kind of – came to an understanding, this past year. After you left for Boston."

Stiles nods quickly, then gets dizzy and stops. "That's good. Really good. I'm glad."

"You were still closer to him than I was." Scott swallows, looking away. "Than – "

"Yeah." Stiles clears his throat. "Let's not go there."

Scott nods easily.

"Where's Allison?"

At this, Scott's face changes, morphing into something a little less comfortable. "Home," he says. "She didn't – we didn't think it would be a good idea for her to be around."

Yeah. Stiles doesn't really blame her for staying scarce, is grateful that she's still as smart as she ever was about things like this. As much as he likes, cares about, maybe even loves Allison, she's the last person he wants to see right now, the one who never forgave Derek, never even made an effort to like him, was always pulling Scott in the opposite direction in subtle ways, by virtue of who she was and the life that they both wanted to have together. She may not have wanted Derek dead anymore, but she did at one point, even tried to make it happen, and basically Stiles is really glad she's not here.

"How is she," Stiles asks dully, making the effort.

"Good," Scott replies shortly, leaving it at that. "We waited, to plan a funeral. Until you got here."

Stiles laughs, he can't help it. "Oh yeah. Thanks."

Scott takes the bottle out of his hands. "Okay. You're welcome."

"Hey," Stiles says, "you don't need that. That won't even work on you."

"But it's working on you," Scott says wryly, placing it out of reach.

"Thanks, Dad," Stiles drawls, just to be an ass. Scott scowls at him obligingly.

"So I fixed the freezer," Melissa calls, wandering into the room, a towel tossed over her shoulder and a few bottles of water in her hands. "I think. Hopefully. Here." She tosses one of the bottles at Scott, who catches it easily.

"Thanks, Mom."

Melissa shrugs, slipping into the spot between Stiles and the arm of the couch. "And one for you," she says, pushing another bottle into Stiles' hands. "How d'ya feel, kid?"

Stiles snorts, grappling with the cap. Melissa takes it back from him and opens it smoothly, handing it back over without a word. "Great. I'm peachy keen, really. Wonderful."

Melissa slides an arm around his shoulders, squeezing tightly. "He was a good man," she says quietly. "Underneath it all, he really was."

The use of the past tense hits Stiles right in the gut, like an actual, physical impact, right beneath his sternum. "Right," he says flatly. "He was a good man. And somebody murdered him."

Stiles can actually feel Scott's eyes turn golden, like a sudden static charge in the air that raises the hair on the back of his neck. Beside him, Melissa tenses too, going rigid for a second before she deliberately relaxes.

"We'll find them," Scott promises, a world of danger in his tone. "We will."

Stiles turns away, leaning his head against Melissa's shoulder. "Sure we will," he says tiredly. "Sure."

 

 

Boyd and Erica bring Lydia in eventually, who immediately appropriates the vodka bottle and plops down next to Stiles. They share it between them and get so blindingly wasted that Stiles won't even remember most of it the next morning, and pass out there on the couch, with the others hovering over them, heavy, watchful, familiar presences.

He dreams about that day he and Derek drove up to the coast to find some special type of stone that was supposed to ward off malevolent influences, back right after Peter Hale the Sequel, when everyone was paranoid and running around trying to come up with something, anything that would keep that shit from going down a third time, because they'd barely made it through, holding on by their fingernails, really.

Only in his dream they're in the Camaro, which was wrong, they took Stiles' Jeep for that one, and Stiles is driving, which is super extra wrong because Derek never let Stiles drive the Camaro. Derek is next to him, but he's also in the back seat, and his face is pale and his shirt is soaked in blood, the veins in his arm bulging and black.

"You have to find it," Derek tells him. "You have to."

"The bullet?" Stiles asks, confused because wrong car, wrong day, wrong wrong wrong, "Scott – he called – "

"No, Stiles," Derek replies, and now he's driving and Stiles is in the passenger seat. There's blood everywhere, Derek got it fucking everywhere and now it's all over Stiles, thanks a lot, Derek. "Try to keep up."

"I'm _trying,_ " Stiles says, irritating. "I'm trying but you're not exactly Mr. Share and Care you know, if you were just a little bit more verbal I have a feeling it would make several things that we do together a lot smoother – "

"Stiles," Derek says, from behind him, "keep looking, you have to find it."

The sky outside is dark green and the clouds are dark red, like Derek's blood, like Stiles' blood, these cuts on his hands, he doesn't know where he got them but they hurt, and he's driving again and Derek is next to him and he's getting blood on the wheel, that's not right. "Looking for what, Derek," Stiles says urgently, "tell me."

"Take care of yourself," Derek says, and starts choking on blood, spitting out bright red slashes of cloud all over the window, Stiles' hands, the dashboard. Stiles reaches out for him but all he can touch is green sky, red cloud, and he wakes up clawing at his own throat.

_Take care of yourself,_ Stiles thinks, over and over until the words lose meaning. Take care of yourself. Right.

It's morning again.

 

 

He finds Lydia and Erica tangled up together on the mattress in the guest bedroom and Stiles immediately retreats, remembering the last time he'd interrupted their…whatever. His head ached for _days._

Melissa is in the kitchen cooking eggs, and she hands him a mug of coffee and three aspirin and shoos him out to the porch, where Boyd is sitting with his customary bottle of Gatorade. Stiles had forgotten little things like that, away in Boston buried in books and classes and professors – things like, Boyd is a Gatorade fiend, Lydia keeps bags of walnuts stashed everywhere, Erica messes with her hair obsessively. It's strange, what you forget and what you remember.

"Stiles," Boyd greets calmly. It's still early, and Stiles shivers, the late winter chill still biting and uncomfortable. Boyd isn't bothered, of course, although Stiles suspects that that's more of a Boyd thing than a werewolf thing.

"Morning," Stiles says roughly. He wraps himself up in the blanket from the living room couch, curling his hands around the mug. It's actually kind of refreshing though, to be cold, after the cloying heat of his dream. Nightmare. "Scott go home?"

Boyd nods. "Deaton isn't going to let him come back to work for a while," he says. "So he'll probably be back, after he checks on Allison."

"Erica and Lydia are still asleep," Stiles says uselessly, knowing Boyd absolutely knows that. Boyd inclines his head in acknowledgment anyway, calmly polite as he always is. "How are you guys doing?"

"Fine," Boyd replies. "Other than…" his eyes grow distant.

Stiles swallows thickly, thinking of how in sync Boyd and Derek always were, how they seemed to understand each other so easily. If there's anyone else Stiles should show the voicemail to, it's Boyd, but Stiles can't bring himself to do it, can't even contemplate the option.

"We need to claim the body," Boyd says bluntly, shaking himself out of his daze. "We need to do a proper burial."

_Wolf burial,_ he doesn't say. "My dad said," Stiles says haltingly, "that any of us could claim – him. We just have to…go do it."

Boyd nods. "I will," he says firmly. Stiles nods in agreement – yeah, he's perfectly fucking happy to let Boyd field that one.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here," Stiles blurts, needing to say it to _someone,_ to just get it out in the air already. Maybe Boyd is the best option, anyway, the second in command, the one Derek could always count on. Maybe he gets it. "I should have been."

"You don't owe us an apology," Boyd says slowly.

"I know, but I wanted to give you one anyway."

Boyd nods solemnly, turning his face slightly enough to catch Stiles' gaze. "He was glad you were doing well at school. He was proud of you."

The idea is so absurd that Stiles has to laugh. "Right, I bet he put a copy of my thesis up on the fridge, right?"

Boyd shrugs, looking out at the street and taking a long swig of his drink.

There's a muffled thump from above, on the roof of the house, and Stiles jumps, nearly dislodging his own mug from its spot on the arm of his chair. "What the hell – "

"It's just Isaac," Boyd says casually. "He's been up there since he woke up this morning."

Stiles leans forward, trying to peer up on the roof.

"We're going to leave him alone for a while," Boyd says, a subtle note of command in his voice.

"Right," Stiles replies, leaning back with a sigh. His chest feels congested, like he's just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes or spent an hour running for his life. Or both. "Good to be home, huh."

Boyd's expression twists before he quickly looks away, and Stiles kind of regrets saying anything at all.

 

 

Stiles heads back over to the new house by himself, as nobody else seems all that keen on going with him. He wants to see it, at least. Maybe they'll keep it, maybe they won't, but – yeah, he wants to see it.

The first floor is pretty much empty, eerie in the way that unfurnished houses tend to be, echoing Stiles' footsteps back at him. There's a few boxes of pots and dishes in the kitchen that he recognizes as Boyd's, and some curtains halfway hung in the living room, new looking, sheer and light blue.

Upstairs there's a bedroom obviously already claimed by Erica, with a desk propped up beneath the window, a smattering of makeup and a small iPod deck plugged into the outlet. It looks like most of her clothes are already hanging up in the closet, which would explain why she's been wearing the same outfit for the past three days. Stiles gathers up some jeans and t-shirts for her, wincing at the thought of proud, brave Erica, defeated by a house. Or the ghost inside the house, rather.

And it is a ghost, for lack of a better word, Stiles can feel it in every inch of the place. Like he'll just turn around and Derek will be standing there like a big creeper, staring and waiting for someone to notice him. Like all Stiles has to do is find the right moment, and there he'd be.

He finds Derek's books stacked in the master bedroom, on the floor up against the wall. Stiles sits down and thumbs through the stacks and thinks about the last time he saw Derek in person, six months ago, right before Stiles left for his last year at UMass, the fight they'd had. Not _the_ fight but _a_ fight, one in a line of many, because Stiles was too pushy and Derek was too stubborn and they never quite got a handle on how to meet halfway between the two.

He'd thrown a book at Derek's head. It was one of these, probably.

Stiles has always figured they were so hard on each other because they needed it; Derek relied on Stiles to be objective, to say the things that nobody else could, and Stiles always needed Derek to point out the hard truths that he had trouble acknowledging, to be ruthless in a way that they all needed to be but couldn't always manage.

It was part of why he'd left, deliberately chosen a school so far away. He'd needed something separate, something distinct, that he owned by himself and himself alone. He'd needed space - from Beacon Hills, from Scott, Allison, his dad, everybody. From Derek. Not that everything was all their fault, point of fact most of it wasn't, but maybe it took Stiles a while to realize that. Maybe Stiles blamed them, Derek especially, for a lot of things, because it was easier that way, and because he needed to blame somebody. 

It didn't stop him from being a friend, though, from answering all their calls and helping with their problems and writing a thesis on _obscure folklore,_ for pete's sake, like, who besides pretentious future college professors and Stiles does that? Nobody.

The truth is Stiles was scared, but now it turns out he didn't even know the meaning of the word, all those times when he thought, _this is it, this is the one we can't beat,_ because he had no idea. No idea what it was like to face down the gnawing emptiness of a future like the one he sees now, without someone there to bitch and growl and make reckless decisions and cobble together half-baked plans in alleyways and abandoned buildings. Derek might not have been perfect but he was _theirs,_ and he gave them all of his energy and attention, one hundred percent of the time, and Stiles just isn't sure if they're going to get through this in one piece.

When Stiles leaves, he takes the books with him. He's had enough of empty houses.


	2. Chapter 2

Boyd, Scott, Erica and Isaac bury the body in the woods behind the old Hale mansion, near to Laura. They do it at night, during a new moon, and nobody sees them again until the next morning.

It's a wolf thing.

Stiles and Lydia spend the time planting a Yew sapling in the front yard of the new house. Derek had left a will, after all, leaving everything to everyone, pretty much, so the house is staying – not like they have a whole lot of options, Erica and Isaac in particular. They still haven't stepped foot on the property, though. That's gonna be a problem.

Stiles digs the hole alone while Lydia fills up big wooden planters with cyclamen and zinnias, setting them up in the big, empty foyer, near the windows on either side of the front door. In the spring, they can plant them in the ground, but for now they'll be the first thing people see when they walk in.

_Death and sorrow,_ Stiles thinks, _resignation, goodbye, an absent friend._ Maybe they'll be the only ones who will see it, but who else needs to know, at the end of the day, who else besides them would even care?

 

 

There's no _good_ day to visit the cop shop, really, even with his dad back in office. The election had been shocking enough what with his dad's last-minute entry and _Rudy_ -like victory, but add Beacon Hills's latest scandalous, bloody death and Stiles' well-established history with the victim and you get awkwardness all around.

And staring. Stiles has never enjoyed the staring.

"Stiles," his father says warily, freezing with his hands suspended over his computer keyboard. "You're here. That's – okay."

Stiles kicks the door shut with a heel and collapses on the couch they keep in here for grieving family members and traumatized teenagers. Stiles figures he sort of qualifies as both.

"I think I gave Mrs. Newton a coronary," he says thoughtfully, propping his feet up on the mini fridge that his dad keeps in here exclusively to keep his Diet Coke cold. "Or is that just sunburn?"

"She went to Cancun for her fiftieth anniversary," his dad says. "She brought me back a sombrero."

"Is that where that came from?" Stiles asks. "I thought you made an unfortunate late night dollar store decision."

The Sheriff sighs, pushing back from his desk and folding his arms across his chest. He's wearing his _quit denying your emotions_ expression which has always been such a mood killer. "Stiles."

"You know I need to see it."

"I know no such thing."

Stiles snorts. "Please. Like you haven't been waiting for me to show up here since the day I got back into town."

"It's an open murder investigation and you're a twenty-three year old kid who was emotionally attached to the victim," his dad says firmly.

"You knew him too," Stiles accuses, in a burst of petulant resentment. "You liked him, even."

"Which is why I'm letting Hernandez take the lead on it," the Sheriff says, a little too gently for Stiles' taste. "Officially."

" _Why_ would you even do that," he snaps, "when you _know_ that whoever killed him is most likely not human and definitely too much for him to handle? Are you trying to get more people killed?"

His father's expression turns thunderous. "Watch it," he says warningly. "I don't put my people in unnecessary danger, Stiles, give me a little credit."

Stiles frowns at him, studying the resigned set of his father's expression. "You're sabotaging it, aren't you?"

The Sheriff winces, shooting a look at the closed door. "Keep your voice down, jeez."

"You sent Hernandez off on a wild goose chase to keep everyone distracted?" Stiles asks, lowering his voice to a murmur. "So what, you could investigate on your own?"

"I don't see many other options," his dad says in frustration. "I can't in good conscience let whoever did this off the hook, but I can't let my deputies get involved either until I know what I'm dealing with."

"So let me help," Stiles insists desperately, "for God's sake, Dad, you _know_ you need me."

"I'm not denying that, but that's not the point," his dad replies. "Stiles, it's not a good idea for you to – "

"Oh, fuck that," Stiles blurts, belatedly registering the mix of anger and shock that rolls across his father's face. "Do me a favor and don't presume to lecture me on how to handle my grief, okay, this is _Derek_ we're talking about. Somebody _murdered_ him, and whoever did it was _not_ human, and it's our responsibility to figure out who did it and take them down. You don't get to interfere with that, okay, it's not your place."

His dad looks at him for a long, heavy moment before pinching the bridge of his nose in obvious fatigue. "Jesus, Stiles."

"Sorry," Stiles says numbly, not really feeling the guilt yet although he knows he will later. "It's the truth."

"I'm still your father," the Sheriff says thickly, "I still have a place in _your_ life. Don't I?"

"Of course," Stiles replies hollowly. "Dad, of _course._ "

"Awesome. So. I'm saying, I don't think this will help you. I think it will make it worse."

"Because you don't think I can handle it," Stiles says bitterly.

"No, because you just lost a friend in a shocking, violent way and you're in pain," his father says calmly. "Because I'm worried that you'll let your anger become too important to you, until you can't see past it."

_Like Derek did,_ is the implication in that sentence. Both of them can see it written in the air between them, plain as day.

Stiles leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, taking a deep breath and trying to choose his words as carefully as he can, like he does with his students, pushing the emotion back until he's sure it won't touch his voice. "I won't say that I'm not angry," he says slowly, "because I am, of course I am. He was my friend, sort of, and he saved my life like a billion times and he was a good man, and somebody killed him, and that sucks. That sucks and it hurts, and I miss him and I wish he were here. But Dad." Stiles shakes his head helplessly, failing as always to come up with the right combination of words to say this. "It's not just about me, it's about – about all of us. We need to find out who did it, okay. We just – we _need_ to."

"Let me guess," his dad says dryly, "it's a werewolf thing."

Well yeah, Stiles doesn't say. Instead he just takes the safe route and shrugs.

"Okay." The Sheriff shakes his head once, irritation turning his voice gruff. "Okay. Fine. You win – but _you_ only, got it? No sharing with the werewolf club, and anything you do you clear with me first, hear me? We'll work this together, nothing less or I'll put you on a plane back to Boston so fast your ears will spin."

Stiles really believes him. There would be handcuffs involved. "Deal." He pauses. "With the caveat of calling them in if we need it. Because we probably will."

His dad just rolls his eyes, unlocking the bottom drawer of his desk with a key from his breast pocket. "Right. Whatever." He slams a thick manila file on the desk, still visibly annoyed.

"Damn," Stiles says, "it's only been like two weeks Dad, I knew you were good but not _this_ good. No offense."

"This," his father replies, "is the _Derek Hale File._ " He pronounces it with implied capital letters and everything. "Not just the – well, the recent investigation. But everything."

Stiles swallows, taking in the bulging folder. "Everything? The...fire, too?"

"Everything." He pushes it forward enticingly. "Take it home with you. It shouldn't be here, anyway."

Stiles jumps up and slides the whole thing into the backpack he'd brought for this express purpose, moving quickly before his dad thinks to change his mind and have Stiles arrested, or something.

"Just go through it, okay? We'll talk more when I get home. Fill in the blanks."

Stiles doesn't intend on doing any of that filling, like, at all, but his dad doesn't need to know that. "Sure, Dad. Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," his father says. Stiles thinks it's meant to be a joke, but it comes out twisted and grim. "Seriously."

Stiles salutes, just as grimly. "Sure thing, Pops. And don't worry, mum's the word with Bess and George and the gang."

His dad shakes his head heavily. "Oh yeah," he says, "this is gonna go real well."

 

 

_We can't do anything rash yet, not when we don't know what's going on. The Argents are still watching us, remember, and –_

_Yeah, laughing their asses off, I bet. Throwing a party._

_Stop it, seriously. We have to be cautious. Whoever killed Derek had to be the same person who took Lydia, who gave Lydia_ back _– they're powerful. Magic powerful. We can't fight them until we have more information._

_So we sit on our asses and do nothing? The longer we wait the colder the trail gets!_

_No, we won't do nothing. We just won't do it your way. Yet._

 

 

"How'd it go?"

Only years of practice stop Stiles from yelping loudly and jumping two feet in the air.

"Hello, Isaac," he says, "I'm fine, Isaac. Just on my way home, Isaac. Feel free to sit in the back seat of my car and act like a creeper, Isaac."

"Hello, Stiles," Isaac says, at prime level bitchy today, "quit dicking around and answer my question, Stiles."

"It went fine," Stiles says carefully. "My dad says hello."

Isaac makes a face. "What'd you find out? Did you get the case file?"

Stiles turns over the ignition. "Have you eaten yet today, man? You look pretty pale."

"I'm fine," Isaac replies irritably. "You're deflecting."

"I haven't tried that new deli on West 78th," Stiles comments. "Is it any good? Let's go, it's on me. Seize the day and all that."

"I'm not fucking _hungry_ ," Isaac snarls, wolfing out and tearing five neat gouges into the passenger seat head rest with his claws.

Stiles grips the steering wheel with white knuckles. "Thanks, for that," he says, clearing his throat, pulse pounding like a hammer. "I think my dad's been wanting to get this thing reupholstered anyway."

Isaac doesn't answer, too busy breathing deeply and staring creepily at nothing while he meditates his way back to human mode.

"We done with that? Yeah? Still up for hoagies? I know I am."

"Did you get the case file," Isaac says flatly, swallowing. His eyes are still glowing unnaturally, which even after all these years, still gives Stiles the shivers.

Over the last couple weeks Stiles has seen every variation of righteous werewolf rage, but of everyone, Isaac is definitely the most insistent fan of the Murder-Death-Kill revenge mission. The first time Stiles had even _talked_ to him since Derek's death was in the middle of a full-on meltdown, for pete's sake, four days after Stiles got back into town, helping Boyd try and calm Isaac down after they went in to claim the body from the morgue. Stiles is not looking forward to the next full moon, and that is a serious understatement.

_Let your anger become too important to you, until you can't see past it,_ he thinks.

"No," he says. "No dice."

Isaac stares at him for a long, tense moment before looking away. "We'll steal it."

"No can do if we don't know where it is," Stiles says, hopefully not too quickly to be suspicious. "Look, let me work on my dad. You just keep doing what you're doing, tracking down Derek's movements for the last few weeks. That's more of a lead than anything my dad probably has, anyway."

Isaac's expression falters, for the first time, creasing into something a little less angry. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."

Stiles smiles hopefully. "You still up for that hoagie? I'm starving."

Isaac shrugs, but it's more listless than anything else. Stiles decides to take it as encouragement.

"Great. Climb on up here though, I'm not your chauffeur, Miss Daisy."

"I don't know what that means," Isaac says, but climbs up front anyway. Progress, Stiles thinks happily.

 

 

Derek was the one who taught him how to lie - to werewolves, specifically, but also just in general because let's be honest, Stiles isn't exactly the coolest customer. After the, let's see, _third_ time this almost made him dead, Derek said enough was enough and sat him down to fix the problem.

"It's like fooling a lie detector test," he'd said, "you have to either _believe_ that you're not lying, or mess up your baseline so that we can't tell what you sound like when you're telling the truth. All wolves do is listen to your heartbeat, and that isn't foolproof."

Stiles just rolled his eyes at him. "And how exactly am I supposed to control a completely involuntary bodily function?"

"Snipers can control their heartbeats," Derek said, obviously under the impression that it would be helpful.

"It's super creepy that you know that, why do you know that?"

Derek gave a great, put upon sigh. "Because I like to pop off school children on the weekends, Stiles. How does anybody know anything?"

Stiles laughed kind of involuntarily, clapping one hand over his mouth just a second too late. Derek rolled his eyes. "Please don't say that in earshot of my dad, okay. Just saying, it's a little too believable."

Derek hunched his shoulders, looking a little hunted the way he did whenever the subject of the Sheriff was brought up. "Shut up and concentrate," he barked. "What's your name?"

Stiles took a deep breath, closing his eyes and trying his best to concentrate. "Norman," he said.

"No," Derek replied. "What's your name?"

Stiles opened one eye hopefully. "Carl?"

Derek shook his head. "Stop trying to lie to me, and start lying to _yourself._ "

Stiles closed his eyes again and thought, _I don't give a shit about Derek Hale,_ and said, "my name is Brian."

Derek was quiet for a second, and when Stiles brought his head up and looked at him, he looked a little pleased. "Better," he said. "Where do you live, Brian?"

"Nowhere," Stiles said, smiling, watching the movement of Derek's hands around his coffee cup. "Sometimes I think I'm not actually alive at all."

 

 

Lydia calls halfway through Stiles' pastrami on rye. Stiles knows it's her without even having to look, as she'd programmed a special ringtone for her number three days ago while Stiles was in the shower.

"Is that the theme from _The X-Files_?" Isaac asks, brow furrowed.

"I cannot believe you know _X-Files_ , Isaac, I always knew you were good people," Stiles exclaims happily. "One second. Hey Bess! Hold up a minute cutie pie, I'm in the middle of something."

Lydia, bless her heart, stays quiet on the other end.

"Gotta take this," Stiles says to Isaac, shrugging. "Friend from school."

Isaac rolls his eyes. "Cutie pie," he says skeptically, and takes a huge, disgusting bite of his sandwich.

"Yep, yep," Stiles says, and bolts.

"Why do you answer the phone around our werewolf friends?" Lydia asks irritably, once Stiles is safely back in the pick-up, an entire parking lot, two walls and a few dozen protective anti-spying sigils between him and Isaac's ears. "You could've called me back."

"I…could have," Stiles says, biting his lip. "Yes. That is a thing that I could have done."

"Bess," Lydia says thoughtfully. "Like Bess Marvin?"

"You can be Nancy if you want," Stiles offers.

"No. You're much more of a Nancy than I am," Lydia says slyly. Stiles snorts appreciatively. "So you got the file, right?"

"Right. Mission accomplished. What about you?"

"I'm just leaving Vallejo," Lydia says. Stiles can hear the faint sounds of her heels on the pavement, her car door opening, distant traffic. "You were right about Morrell – once she heard what happened she practically tripped over her own feet to help. I've got like ten orgasms' worth of books in my backseat."

"My mouth is already watering."

"I aim to please." Stiles hears her slam her door shut, then sigh delicately, pictures her in her tiny, trendy little Nissan, face drawn and eyes tired. "Stiles, are you sure we should be keeping this from everybody? I don't think I can lie to them like you can. They'll see through me like wet paper."

Stiles leans forward to press his forehead against the steering wheel, that creeping exhaustion he's been battling for the past month surging back up again stubbornly. "I don't see many other options."

"I don't like it," Lydia says unhappily.

"Well, I'm not exactly having the time of my life, either." The great irony of Stiles Stilinski's life – he hates lying, especially to people he cares about, which doesn't stop him from doing it practically every day, about a great variety of things. "What choice do we have? Isaac went wolf like an hour ago, in my back seat, when I told him I didn't have the file. Dude's on the edge."

"Of course he did," Lydia says, pushing out a loud, frustrated breath.

"Boyd and Erica are hardly even conscious most of the time," Stiles continues. "And Scott is – look. You know as well as I do that whatever did this is nothing like what we've dealt with before. We need to be level headed about this, and a bunch of werewolves who just lost their Alpha are the very definition of not level headed."

"Crazy headed," Lydia agrees. "Wild shapeshifter headed. Fine, fine, but don't make me lie to them, I can't pull it off. Especially with Boyd and Erica."

"Sure. Just get home, you can stay with me and Dad for a couple weeks, until we get to the bottom of this. You can tell them you need some space or something, it won't be a lie. Technically."

"Technically," Lydia repeats, sounding sad. She turns on her car with a grinding rumble. "Yeah. Okay. I'll see you tonight."

"Drive safe," Stiles says wearily, hanging up before she can reply. Sometimes, he hates himself.

"New girlfriend?" Isaac asks, when Stiles manages to slump his way back inside. "You didn't mention."

"Nah, just a friend," Stiles says, picking at the remains of his sandwich. "Did you eat some of this?"

Isaac shrugs. "I guess I was hungrier than I thought," he mumbles, sucking down iced tea through a huge, yellow straw. It's just…ridiculous and endearing at the same time, which is sort of Isaac's _thing._ Stiles feels strangely bolstered by it. "Thanks."

"Sure," Stiles says, pleased, pushing the rest of his plate in Isaac's direction. He wasn't lying earlier – Isaac really does look more malnourished than usual. "You feel better?"

"Yeah." Isaac accepts the sandwich without protest, shaking off a piece of pastrami and popping it in his mouth. "I'm sorry about earlier."

"It's fine." Stiles shifts uncomfortably. "Don't worry about it."

"I should be past that by now," Isaac says darkly. "I thought I was."

Stiles watches him pick apart the food, a barely noticeable shake to his movements. There's something heavy and swollen in Stiles' chest, something that aches at the bloodshot rims of Isaac's eyes, the sharp edges of his collarbone that peek out from beneath his t-shirt. "It's understandable," he says carefully. "I get it, okay? I do."

Isaac doesn't look up, methodically tearing apart pieces of bread and cheese on the plate. "Boyd thinks I'm dangerous. He keeps watching me like I'm about to fly off the handle."

_Boyd's a smart man,_ Stiles thinks. "He's just worried about you. We all are."

Isaac ducks his chin into his chest. "M'fine," he mumbles, entirely unconvincingly.

Stiles takes a deep breath. Talking down an emotionally unstable werewolf 101 – it's amazing how often this actually happens. "Look," he says, "we'll find them. Whoever did it. We will. But we can't if you're not okay. Right? We all need to be okay. That's the number one priority."

"I am okay," Isaac insists. "I think."

"Right," Stiles says skeptically. "I don't think the table's agreeing with you, buddy."

Isaac rips his hand away, revealing a giant crack in the Formica. Silently, they stare at each other.

"Maybe I should run home," Isaac says after a moment.

"I'll get the check," Stiles replies.

 

 

It's not like Stiles doesn't _understand,_ out of everyone Isaac was always the one who relied on Derek the most. The guy couldn't sneeze without asking Derek to cover his nose, or so Stiles used to say, along with a lot of other sarcastic, mean things.

After Peter died (the Sequel) Isaac and Derek got a condo in one of the crappier neighborhoods, or maybe they just squatted in one, who even knows. Either way, they stayed there for almost two years, living in each other's pockets, while Scott, Lydia and Stiles went off to college and Boyd and Erica went on their Jack Kerouac-esque road trip to find themselves and commune with nature and have sex in lots of different states, or whatever.

It meant, basically, that Isaac and Derek were on their own for a while, and if Isaac maybe looked to Derek more often than anyone else _before_ that, it was even worse after. Sometimes Stiles thought that Isaac was the only one out of all of them who actually _liked_ Derek, who stayed with him because he wanted to, not because it would've been fatally stupid of them to leave.

It feels like such a nasty thing to think, now, but it would be unfair to Derek to try and lie about it. Derek didn't _want_ to be liked. He just wanted them to listen.

This particular revelation would've been a lot more useful when he was alive, but that's the status quo for most of the things Stiles has been realizing lately. He'd forgotten, since his mom, how that works, how you start thinking about all the things that you didn't say or do that you should have. It's maybe even worse this time around, because maybe it could've been different, maybe he didn't have to –

Anyway.

 

 

Stiles spends a very painful few hours going through the police file, working backwards and starting with the most recent stuff first, to confront the worst of it right away, or something. This ends up being completely and totally wrong, since most of what the cops have gathered on Derek's death is a big fat load of nothing, but the documents about the fire are so extensive they make Stiles sick to read.

Derek had a little brother, Stiles finds out. He'd never bothered to look into the Hales beyond what little he'd picked up from the news reports and gossip when it happened, and Derek had certainly never offered any information, but there it is, black and white, Samuel Hale, age six, cause of death, smoke inhalation. There's even an autopsy photo.

_They had the same nose_ , Stiles thinks, and has to take a break to go drink some water and calm down. Jesus.

When he climbs the stairs back up to his room Scott is there, standing over the desk and frowning down at the file. Stiles has a knee-jerk reaction of anger because what the _hell,_ how _dare_ he rifle through Derek's life when he didn't even _like_ the guy, but then he sees the obvious struggle all over Scott's face, his clenched fist at his side. The way he's carefully sliding the pictures back into the pile.

"You could've used the front door," Stiles comments.

"I thought your dad wouldn't give this to you," Scott replies, ignoring the question. He looks up and shrugs. "Isaac texted me."

Stiles may have the lying-to-werewolves thing down by now but he still can't tell one worth a shit to Scott, and it has nothing to do with his heartbeat. "Yeah, well. I opted for the safer and saner route. Plus Dad forbade me to tell any of you."

"Oh and _now_ you're going to start listening to what your dad tells you to do?"

Well, that kind of stings.

"It's better this way," he says, too weary to go into any more detail.

Scott frowns at him disapprovingly. It reminds Stiles of Allison, weirdly. "They deserve to be involved with this."

Like Stiles doesn't know that, like that thought hasn't been crawling around in his gut for the past week. "We need to be clear headed about this. I can't trust them to be."

Scott sinks down into Stiles' abandoned desk chair, angling his shoulder back toward the array of papers. "Are you sure this isn't…"

"Isn't what," Stiles says quickly. It comes out tightly, stretched out tight between them.

"About your feelings for Derek," Scott replies, undaunted. Sometimes Stiles misses the era when Scott wasn't this bold.

"I don't wanna talk about that."

"I know you two had some kind of fight last month; Derek was moodier than all hell and he would walk out of the room whenever somebody said your name – "

"I _don't_ wanna talk about it, Scott," Stiles says, more irritably.

"I think you should," Scott replies. "It might help, might make you less…" he waves his hand vaguely at the file.

"Dude, this isn't some Punisher-esque self-destruct mission," Stiles snaps, easier this time, because he knows it's the truth. Probably the truth. Thinks it's the truth. "I can't take this to Isaac because he's perpetually two seconds away from flying off the handle, and Boyd and Erica have retreated into hibernation, I can't even get them on the fucking phone."

"Well you can't do this by _yourself,_ " Scott argues. "You think things are going to get any better if you get yourself killed, too?"

"Lydia and my father are helping," Stiles says, lifting his chin stubbornly. "And you can help too, unless you're going to act like a big jackass, in which case you can just take your judginess and just – leave. _Yeah._ "

Scott's mouth quirks, just slightly. "Okay," he says slowly.

"Okay." Stiles flops down on the bed. Maybe he could just go to sleep right now, maybe with Scott in the room the nightmares wouldn't be so bad. And maybe he'd wake up tomorrow morning and the last two weeks will have been a comps-induced fever dream.

"I never – " Scott shakes his head, picking up an 8x10 of the scorched interior of the mansion. Stiles can see the water marks from the fire hoses on the walls, all the way from across the room. "I guess I never thought about it that much. When he was alive."

"None of us did." It's something Stiles has been thinking about a lot, can't _stop_ thinking about over the last three hours. They'd all _known_ what had happened to the Hales, of course, but they spent a lot of time acting like they didn't. Derek never brought it up, and after Peter was finally gone it got a lot easier to let it slip to the wayside, pretend like Derek was the way he was because he was just kind of a dick and nothing else.

"I wish…" Scott reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I dunno. I wish I'd done some things differently, I guess."

"Doesn't change anything now," Stiles says dully, which is not really what Scott wants or needs to hear, he knows, but whatever. Just, whatever. "Are you gonna tell the others?"

Scott studies him gravely, then shakes his head once. "Not my pack, not my business," he says succinctly.

Stiles just rolls his eyes at that; after this long you'd think they would've all gotten over the 'I'm in the club and you're not' game. Apparently it's another wolf thing.

Scott's chin jerks toward the window slightly. "Lydia's here."

"Great." Stiles propels himself upward with a grunt. "Want to stay for dinner? We're having spaghetti and meatballs and judgment-free conversation that isn't about my feelings."

Scott chuckles. "Sure, man," he says. "Allison's still at her dad's, won't be back until late."

"I'm sure that's very comforting for you," Stiles says.

Scott just shakes his head, standing up and pulling Stiles into a short, one-armed hug.

"You're my best friend, Stiles," he says, mumbling it into Stiles' shoulder. "I want you to be okay, promise me you'll be okay."

Stiles opens his mouth to do just that but the words die in his throat, scraping along the edges like sandpaper. "I've got it under control," is what he finally comes up with, and when Scott pulls back, he's got a look on his face like he knows exactly what Stiles means.

"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," he replies.

 

 

_Yeah, it's me. Again. Try calling me back this time, would you please? Fuck's sake, I –_

_Whatever. Okay. Sorry. Just – call me._


	3. Chapter 3

Lydia and the Sheriff get along incredibly well, which isn't something Stiles likes to think about too closely, because it's terrifying. Stiles wakes up most mornings to the two of them yelling at the news.

("Good morning," Stiles will say.

"Shut _up,_ Matt Lauer!" they will reply, or some variation thereof.)

Then Stiles will make breakfast, since he's the only one without an unhealthy dependence on bacon fat (this is maybe part of the reason his dad adores Lydia) and the three of them will yell at the news together, and drink too much coffee, and for an hour or so, none of them will mention anything that has to do with Derek, or werewolves, or mysterious deaths, or murder investigations, and it is without a doubt the best part of Stiles' day.

These mornings often turn into the only bright point in an otherwise sucking black hole of failure and disappointment, as Lydia and Stiles spend most of their time pouring through books and creep-ass internet forums for any clue on what might have happened to Derek, only to come up with nothing, time and time again. Even Stiles' Google-fu/JSTOR access and Lydia's impressive knowledge of dead languages is useless when they don't have the first clue what to look for.

"Maybe we need to go to Chris Argent," Lydia posits tentatively, one afternoon when they've finally exhausted the stack of books from Ms. Morrell. "He has to be looking into this too, right? And the Argent bestiary is impressive, you have to admit."

"Screw that," Stiles says succinctly. "No."

Lydia shoots him a flat, unimpressed look. "Would you rather keep doing this for the next ever?" she asks, gesturing to the dining room table that is practically overflowing with useless information. "I can't keep lying to Erica and Boyd. Okay? I cannot."

"You haven't even seen them," Stiles snaps, on the edge between frustration and despair. "Have they even called? Once? 'Cuz they sure as hell haven't been returning _my_ voicemails."

Lydia's face goes dark, her mouth falling into a straight, unhappy line. "God, Stiles," she says, "ease off before I punch you in the face."

Stiles blinks and drops the book he's holding, letting it fall to the table with a muffled thump. "Sorry," he replies, taking a steadying breath. "I'm sorry."

"I know this is hard for you but it hasn't been a picnic for me either," Lydia continues sharply. "I cared about him too. And it's _my damn fault_ , in case you've forgotten."

"No, it wasn't," Stiles says reflexively. Lydia just shakes her head, flinching away from the protest like it's a burst of hot air. "I'm sorry, okay? Really. I seriously am."

Lydia's shoulders ease visibly. "Everybody grieves differently," is all she says, and it's clear by the look on her face that she's thinking about Jackson.

Stiles just nods, having sudden trouble looking her in the eye. Because his way of grieving is to turn into a sneak-attack asshole, he's been learning.

Lydia tosses her own book aside, taking a deep breath. "Okay," she says. "Pros and cons. Pro: they have a lot of books."

"Con: so do we, and it hasn't helped at all, so far," Stiles says, gesturing to the mess of a dining room. It seriously looks like the entire 390 section of the Dewey Decimal System has puked all over every available surface.

"Pro: they would eat their own hands before they spilled anything to the pack."

"Con: because they wish the pack was _dead,_ " Stiles replies. "And addendum: they probably threw a party when they heard about Derek."

Lydia bites her lip uncertainly. "Pro: Allison."

"Con: Allison," Stiles shoots back.

Lydia snorts. "Touché."

"I don't want to get anyone involved that doesn't absolutely need to be," Stiles says solemnly. "The less people are in on this, the less chance there is that it will blow up in our faces."

Lydia looks more than a little skeptical. "Remind me again why it's a good idea for you to get involved? Mr. _Objective_?"

Stiles barely blinks at the jab, beyond used to it after two weeks of it from his dad and Scott. "Show me a better candidate and I'll gladly step aside."

That's an obvious bluff, and Stiles can tell that Lydia knows it. She refrains from calling him out on it, though, which he really appreciates.

"Then our next step is Deaton," she says. "I know you don't totally trust him, but he is a resource. One that we haven't used."

Stiles sighs, pushing back from the table and walking over to the window, hands jangling at his sides. He's got so much restless energy that he feels like he's about to vibrate right out of his skin. "Uh yeah, historically I've been hesitant to trust people who are mysterious and shady and never tell us the full truth."

"Are we talking about Deaton or Derek?" Lydia says with a smirk.

"Hesitant! I said _hesitant_ ," Stiles yelps. "Whatever. I didn't always trust Derek. You don't have to trust someone to – " he gulps. "Uh."

Lydia's expression turns pained, and she turns her gaze to the open book in her lap, scrawling lines of Latin that look like gibberish to Stiles. But Lydia's always been better at understanding things that nobody else does; it's kind of her specialty. "Yeah."

Stiles leans his forehead against the window pane, staring listlessly at the empty driveway. His car is still in Massachusetts and his dad took the SUV to work, and Lydia's car is parked on the street in deference to the Sheriff.

"Hey," he says, struck by a sudden thought. "Where's the Camaro?"

Lydia makes a startled noise behind him. "At the house," she says. "I think. That's where Derek left it, that day."

Stiles just breathes into the glass, watching the yard slowly disappear behind a cloud of fog. Derek had left the car to Isaac, but Stiles wishes suddenly that it was his, that he could go get it and just drive somewhere, alone and fast on the highway until he's someplace completely different. "Just wondering."

"I don't think Isaac's been driving it," Lydia says. Stiles listens to her chair scraping back from the table, her deft footsteps in the direction of the kitchen. "It's weird, I always thought he'd leave it for Erica, as much as she loves it. But she's got the BMW now, I guess; she's practically married to the stupid thing."

Stiles makes an absent noise of agreement, preoccupied with the surreal image of Derek sitting in a lawyer's office, making a list of everything he owned and who he wanted to have it. It makes sense, it's practical in a completely horrifying, morbid way, and it's just the kind of thing that Derek would do.

"I'll go talk to Deaton," Stiles tells Lydia, tearing himself away from the window. "Tomorrow."

"You want me to come?" Lydia asks. She's leaning against the kitchen counter, a box of Wheat Thins dangling from one hand.

"No, it's fine," comes out before Stiles has much of a chance to think about it, and Lydia just stares at him, crunching on her cracker in a distinctly judgmental manner. "What?"

"Nothing. It's your show." She shakes her head.

"Yeah," he says dumbly, "okay. Let's get out of here for a bit, yeah? Go pick up something for dinner."

Lydia narrows her eyes at him, but goes along anyway, and on their way out the door, she reaches out and squeezes his wrist once, a fierce, short gesture of support. It's comforting, kind of, but it also isn't. Stiles can't seem to explain it, even to himself.

He's going to make a real effort to keep that from becoming a trend.

 

 

What Derek left to Stiles: his "unassigned personal effects," which include all of his books, which are either strewn about the dining room with the rest of the 390s or in Stiles' room, stacked in neat piles on the floor beneath the window, like they'd been at the house. Derek had an unsurprising amount of supernatural-related stuff along with a very surprising amount of the complete opposite – Penguin editions of pretty much every book you'd find on an English major's bookshelf, alongside older, more wearied editions of short story collections – John Updike, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, Alice Munro. There was a bunch of random shit too – _The Hunger Games_. Some Tom Robbins. _Running With Scissors,_ a couple Christopher Moore novels, and Shel Silverstein's _Falling Up._ A No Fear Shakespeare edition of _The Tempest_. It was bizarre.

If Stiles had been pressed before Derek's death, he would've said that the broody reading thing was a front, something he did to stave off conversation or an excuse to be left alone. But there's no question now that it wasn't, now that Stiles has looked at them closely, seen the creases in the pages and the worn-down spines. Those books were lived in, worn out, reread, with dog-eared corners and rips in the covers and hidden smears of mud and dirt in-between the pages, where Derek had obviously left it sitting somewhere outside because he was outside _all the time_ , because walls and carpets made him uncomfortable and _fuck._ Derek was a _reader_. He read because he _liked_ it. And Stiles never knew.

(Derek didn't _like_ things. He just – he didn't. Or so Stiles always thought, but now it turns out – he did. He liked a lot of things, a lot of books, a lot of authors, from a lot of different genres and target audiences – he just didn't tell anyone.)

There's also a box of random things that Boyd had gathered up from Derek's bedroom at the condo and handed off to Stiles, figuring it counted under the "personal effects" disclaimer. There's mundane things – toothbrush, shaver, a couple protection amulets, a pair of gloves – and some other stuff Stiles hasn't dared to look at closely. Stuff like letters, with New York return addresses, and a jewelry box that _had_ to have belonged to Laura, and an athame with a scorched handle. Things that meant something to Derek, enough that he'd kept them safe even though he couldn't even be bothered to live in a real home for most of the time that Stiles had known him.

Why he left all this shit to Stiles, Stiles doesn't know. Maybe he knew Stiles would take care of it, or maybe he couldn't think of anyone else. Stiles likes to think that he'd done it because he knew Stiles would want it, because he knew Stiles likes to keep physical reminders of people he's lost, like the closet at his dad's house that still has a bunch of his mom's clothes in it, or the shoebox beneath his bed in Massachusetts with mementos from all of his exes inside.

Or maybe, _maybe_ – because everyone else had gotten practical shit, like money or the car or the house or whatever – but not Stiles. Maybe Derek knew that Stiles wouldn't need any of it nor would he want it, maybe Derek knew that this is what Stiles needed – _Derek_ things. Secrets that Derek couldn't share when he was alive, clues to the hidden parts of himself that Stiles never managed to uncover.

Maybe. Because Stiles doesn't know, of course. Didn't even know that Derek was a reader until now that he's dead. Because, in his infinite wisdom and perceptiveness, Stiles had seen Derek reading a hundred different books a hundred different times and had assumed that he was doing it _for show_. Right.

There are a lot of things Stiles would change, if he could, but that's the one that nags at him the most, probably. How he always tended to look at Derek and assume that whatever the surface looked like was as deep as it went – which was so blatantly wrong that Stiles can't actually believe he was ever that stupid. Or naïve, perhaps. Selfish, definitely.

Hindsight, and all that. Stiles is pretty goddamn sick of it at this point.

 

 

Stiles' thesis adviser is Dr. Benjamin Reardon, the assistant chair of the Humanities department and an associate professor of cultural studies. Stiles met him on his first day of graduate school, when he was wandering around the Humanities building like a lost toddler in a mall, and had literally run into this old dude in a musty suit that looked like it'd been stolen from a thrift shop in the 70s and a tie with a picture of Daria Morgendorffer on it.

"Are you one of mine?" he'd asked, looking down at Stiles through hipster black frame glasses and a face naturally created to express disdain.

Stiles just gaped, impressed and awed by basically everything, and said, "God, I hope so," and the rest was kind of history.

Reardon likes to pretend that he's an old geezer who hates technology and routinely yells at children to get off his lawn, but in reality he's savvier about popular culture and internet memes than the majority of his students. Which is why he calls Stiles over Tinychat, of all things, now that April has officially arrived and Stiles has officially missed the majority of the semester. Reardon's got some kind of moral objection to Skype - whatever it is, Stiles wasn't listening when he explained it.

"How's it going," Reardon asks. Stiles can see that he's in his office, and that there's actually a student waiting outside the open door, peeking in anxiously and glancing at his watch several times. Reardon is pointedly ignoring him, so he's probably an undergraduate.

"Great," Stiles replies, "fantastic. Magnificent. How are you? Terrorizing the unwashed masses?"

Reardon shrugs non-committedly. "It's easier in the fall semester. They get braver after Christmas."

"I'm sure you'll persevere, sir."

"Maybe." The student in the background pokes his head in again, and Reardon swivels around and stares at him. He quickly disappears. "So I assume since you're too far behind for this year, you're coming back in September. Right?"

Stiles sighs. "Yeah. I don't know, doc. I'll keep you posted."

"Well, that's not exactly inspiring." Reardon raises an eyebrow. "You know I'll do my best to keep your seat warm but I can't do that forever. Eventually your ass will have to take up the mantle again."

"It makes me uncomfortable when you objectify me, sir," Stiles says cheerfully.

"You wish." Reardon snorts. "So, what's going on?"

It's a reasonable question to ask; Stiles had only told the graduate school that it was a "family emergency" before hightailing it back to the West coast, and he's running out of the reasonable amount of time that he can expect for something like that. He's most of the way done with his degree but with the economy the way it is, and the amount of people currently working their asses off to get into grad school, he can't expect that his spot will be guaranteed forever.

"Somebody died," Stiles says, "someone I knew. Not my family, but someone – someone else."

Reardon stops his back-and-forth rocking in his desk chair, his face going grave. "Well," he says, "that's a bummer."

Stiles is startled into a laugh.

"This someone and you – pretty close?"

"Yeah," Stiles admits on a sigh. It's not a lie, surprisingly. "Yeah, we were. I've been – I don't know about September."

Reardon looks uncharacteristically serious, folding his hands beneath his chin and regarding Stiles solemnly. "Ah, man," he says, pained. "You know how I am about feelings, Stiles."

Stiles shrugs. "Hey, you asked."

"Okay." Reardon looks briefly up at the ceiling, rolling his shoulders in a move that reminds Stiles, eerily, of Derek. "So you're smart, very bright, you know that. You've worked very hard to get here and you deserve this, so uh." He clears his throat. "So I'm not entirely sure why you're being a moron, but - you should cut that out, okay? Just...just quit it."

Stiles is kind of torn between amusement and what feels a lot like horror. "Is this...are you giving me a pep talk? Is that what's happening right now."

Reardon scowls. "You told me you might drop out! What kind of bullshit is that, what did you expect me to say?"

"I'm not giving up," Stiles says, blinking rapidly, a swell of pleased pride in his chest that he tries desperately not to let show on his face. "I'm just – taking a break. If I lose my spot at UMass, then I'll – I'll apply somewhere else later on; I know I've got good chances of getting funding at another school. It wouldn't be the end of the world. Or my career."

"No," Reardon agrees, "and if that's the case then I'll write you the sappiest, biggest kiss-ass recommendation letter I can come up with, I'll tell you that right now."

"Thank you, sir," Stiles says graciously.

"Whatever," Reardon replies. "Look - can I keep going? If I keep talking are you going to listen or just make that face like you're plotting my violent death and zone out until I say your name three times in a row?"

"I don't do that," Stiles says, not even putting in an effort to make it sound convincing.

"You do do that, and it's frightening," Reardon replies critically. "Okay uh, look, uh - death is like - it's a hard thing, and when you love someone...whatever, and - "

"Jesus Christ," Stiles says.

"Did I say I was done?" Reardon snaps, a little crazed around the eye-area. "I'm just saying, you know, shitty things happen. Right?"

Stiles nods, and swallows, and then nods again.

"They happen a lot." A complicated, uncomfortable expression passes over Reardon's face, and Stiles watches as it gets forcibly shoved away and that normal, cool boredom falls into place once more. "I know a thing or two about shitty things. Because they're just everywhere, Stiles, they're like pop songs, or Quentin Tarantino movies - once you finally get one out of your head you turn around and bam, there's another to take its place."

"That was a great metaphor," Stiles comments.

"It was a simile, numbnuts," Reardon corrects. "So I'm just saying, you know, as someone moderately to extremely invested in your well-being, that it seems like this shitty thing is knocking you down, and maybe I want to make sure you know that I'm here to help you up. If you need it."

"Oh," Stiles says, faintly surprised. "And here I thought you only kept me around because my thesis makes Dr. Livingstone uncomfortable."

"That too," Reardon concedes.

"I'll be okay," Stiles says, shifting weirdly under this new obligation he feels to reassure someone he'd previously thought could only express emotion through sarcasm. "I just - I'm dealing with it. What else can I do?"

"Indeed, Captain," Reardon says. Behind him, a young woman sticks her head in the door of the office, catches sight of the webcam, then blanches and disappears. Stiles muffles a grin, kind of weirdly homesick for Massachusetts all of a sudden, a place that is so far removed from his actual home that it's kind of ridiculous. "Just don't let it bury you, yeah?"

"Yeah," Stiles says softly. "Okay."

"And keep me posted," Reardon says gruffly after a moment, adjusting his glasses with both hands. "I emailed you a couple titles that came out last month that you should check out. And if you happen to make some progress on your goddamn thesis while you're grieving or navel-gazing or whatever, I wouldn't be unhappy."

"As always sir, the depth of your compassion and sensitivity astounds me," Stiles says, but he smiles as he says it, back on solid ground again.

"Right," Reardon replies dryly, "take care of yourself, idiot."

"Will do, old man," Stiles replies, right before Reardon signs off. He thinks he glimpses the grump rolling his eyes but he can't be sure.

It's not as if it's escaped Stiles' attention that Reardon has just said the _exact same_ thing that Lydia, Scott _and_ his father have all repeated multiple times over the last few weeks. Melissa even said something too, although she hinted at it rather than gave any explicit advice.

That worry, that Stiles is losing himself to this, is obvious in almost everything they do, every way they relate and communicate with him. His father has stopped bringing up the case at all, and if he's been able to uncover anything new he isn't sharing. Lydia keeps hovering around him like she's afraid that he's going to run off and disappear if she lets him out of her sight, and Scott keeps making these mother-hen phone calls all the time, asking Stiles all these gentle, probing questions that make Stiles feel like he's just been thrust into an inadvertent therapy session.

Does that change anything, though? Not particularly. If he's self-aware about his own self-destructiveness, does that make it better? Really, _really_ not.

Does Stiles care? Nope. Not even a little.

 

 

_Hey, Stiles, sorry it took me so long to get back to you, we've been – recovering, I guess. Or something._

_I guess you're busy or whatever, but if you want to talk I'll be around tonight, call whenever. Hey, have you heard from Lydia, by the way? We've been texting but she's been a little dodgy on where she's staying – let me know if she says anything to you, okay?_

 

 

"I'm a little offended it took you so long," is the first thing Deaton says, ushering Stiles inside and gesturing him towards an overstuffed armchair near the fireplace. He seems utterly unsurprised by Stiles' unannounced visit – but then again, Stiles doesn't think he's even capable of being surprised by anything. Like a few years ago there was this witch who brought a bunch of trees to life and made them stomp around and eat cars, and all Deaton did was roll his eyes and mutter about _Lord of the Rings_. "I've been waiting."

Stiles takes the seat, perching on the edge of the cushion and folding his hands together between his knees. He feels kind of wary, warier than he'd normally be around Deaton, but there's something about this that's pinging Stiles' radar, something that tells him he needs to be cautious.

Maybe it's Derek's ghost, he thinks. It almost makes him smile.

"I've been a little distracted."

Deaton nods understandingly, ambling around the small kitchenette, pouring hot water into tea cups and setting up sugar and honey on a serving tray. "How has your investigation been going?"

"Not great," Stiles says honestly. "There are too many possibilities, too little details."

Deaton's face stays blank as he sets the tea service down on the coffee table, taking the seat across from Stiles on the leather couch. "There are lots of things that could make a person disappear and reappear again," he says neutrally. "Lots of things that could create a controlled fire, too."

Stiles barely keeps himself from wincing. "I thought," he starts, swallowing hard, "I thought maybe a hunter. Someone related to Kate, because – well, _fire_. But my dad's been keeping tabs on the Argents since Gerard died and he says none of them even left Beacon Heights the entire month before Derek…and – and there aren't any other hunters in the area, because we'd know by now, right?"

Deaton nods. "They aren't usually the patient type," he says.

"Right. So." Stiles tries to stay silent, tries to give Deaton the chance to step up and start talking, but he can't help himself. "Then I thought maybe, a rival pack? But why would they go after Lydia first? She's human, harmless for the most part."

"She may be human but she's not exactly harmless," Deaton corrects. "She was the vehicle through which Peter Hale resurrected himself. We don't know the extent of what that means for her, but it isn't insignificant. Nor is her intellect, which is quite impressive, to say the least."

"Right, but what would a _werewolf pack_ want with her?" Stiles questions. "If they wanted her in their pack, they wouldn't just take her, they'd try to seduce her, like Peter did. And if they thought she was a threat, they'd kill her. And then even if they did take her, why would they let her go? If Derek went after her and they managed to kill him, wouldn't they just keep her? And why would they use _fire_?"

Deaton inclines his head. "Most likely not werewolves, then," he says. "Keep going."

Stiles blows out a breath. "Then I thought, okay, a witch. Someone who has a grudge against us. But there are literally no witches I can think of that would have reason to hurt Derek or Lydia. That one guy, a few years back, who had a crush on Lydia and she ignored him? But he just _wanted_ to be a witch, he didn't have any actual power."

"There are ways around that," Deaton says neutrally, "for someone who has the connections and the money necessary for that sort of endeavor."

Stiles shakes his head in the negative. "No, no, he was pathetic, not devious. And there isn't anyone else – humans, sure, we've got a lot of human enemies. Hunters. Other werewolves. But witches? The only one I can even think of that's still alive is Morrell, and I don't think that she's suddenly turned murderous for no reason."

Deaton smiles faintly, taking a sip of his tea. "Probably not."

"So here I am," Stiles says, spreading his hands out wide. "I need help. _Your_ help. I haven't involved Boyd, Erica or Isaac yet, and I can't keep them out of it for much longer, nor do I want to. And everyone thinks I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown or something, which I very possibly might be, for all I can tell, and I just – I need _something_. Some lead, or clue, _anything_."

"Go back to the beginning," Deaton prompts. "Let's talk it out."

"Okay." Stiles rubs a hand over his head, exhaling slowly. "Okay. Lydia disappears sometime between seven and nine o'clock on Monday. She was supposed to meet Erica for dinner and when she didn't show up, Erica went looking and found her car abandoned by the side of the highway."

"Abandoned how?" Deaton asks, brow furrowed.

"Just – abandoned. The car was still on, the radio was playing. The _seat belt_ was still buckled. It was like she pulled over, and then disappeared into thin air."

Deaton nods thoughtfully. "All right, go on."

"Everyone looks for her and finds nothing, not even a trace," Stiles continues, a little bitterly. It sounds familiar. "Derek was in charge of the woods north of town, where Lydia's car was found. He came back the following day – Tuesday, around lunch, Erica said – and he was visibly frustrated and angry. They said he refused to talk to anyone and just shut himself in his bedroom. Isaac mentioned that he heard some crashing and growling from inside – they thought he was just frustrated about the lack of progress."

Deaton makes a 'keep going' gesture with his hand, nodding encouragingly.

"He left two hours later and didn't tell anyone where he was going. He called me at four-fifteen and left me a voicemail – " Stiles' voice cracks embarrassingly, and he stops to clear his throat, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. "So he must've been alive, at that point. And since Lydia appeared out of nowhere at the house at five o'clock, that must've been when – when it happened."

Deaton's expression is blank, no visible reaction to Stiles' emotion, which Stiles actually really appreciates. If he never has to see another sympathetic _I'm sorry you're hurting_ face from his dad, Lydia or Scott ever again, he'll die a happy man.

"So what have you concluded, just from that?" he asks quietly.

"I think he traded himself for Lydia," Stiles says, with bone-deep, unmovable certainty. "I think he figured out what happened to her that morning when he was in the woods. I think he came back to try and figure out what to do, and he left that afternoon knowing he wasn't coming back, because he was going to offer himself in exchange."

"Which is why he called you," Deaton says, "and why he didn't tell anyone else."

"Right." Stiles nods, filling in the gaps in that sentence in his head. _To say goodbye. Because he knew they'd try to stop him._

Deaton gives Stiles a long, considering look, then sets his cup back on the tray and rises to his feet. "I'm going to give you this," he says, moving to his overflowing bookshelf, "not because I think you should have it, but because I think if I don't give it to you, you'll do something stupid to get it." He slides a few books out of the way and pops a hidden panel in the back of the shelf, revealing a secret compartment.

"Secret files, huh," Stiles says, "very Jason Bourne of you."

Deaton turns around with a wry expression on his face and a fairly large manila file in his hands. Stiles snorts; the fun thing about Deaton is that he doesn't even need to call you an idiot out loud for you to get the message.

"You didn't get this from me," Deaton says, handing Stiles the file carefully. "And you can't take this with you."

Stiles takes a breath and flips it open. Right on top is a copy of the police report on Derek's death. "How did you get this?"

Deaton gives him a look. "Santa Claus."

"Right," Stiles says sheepishly. Flipping past the report on Derek, Stiles sees a similar-looking report on the disappearance of a teenager named Rebecca Tandy in 2012. "Hey," he exclaims, "I remember this. She went to our school, she was a sophomore. She disappeared walking home from school one night."

Deaton nods. "The police didn't find anything," he says neutrally.

"Yeah, Scott looked into it but it seemed like just a normal awful thing, not a supernatural awful thing," Stiles says, flipping the page to find yet another police report, this time for a man named Adrian Turner in 2005. Then another, Yolanda Newberry in 1998. Lauren Heckathorne, 1991. Nathan Rand, 1984. "Fuck."

Deaton raises an eyebrow, nodding in mild agreement. "Notice a pattern?"

"All disappeared without a trace," he says, more to himself than to Deaton, flipping back and forth between the reports, "all unsolved. None of them showed any signs of suicidal tendencies, or displayed signs that they might run away."

"All of them between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight," Deaton continues. "Look at the years, too."

2012, 2005, 1998, 1991, 1984. "Shit," Stiles says, "every seven years. _Shit._ "

"If you look closely, you'll find some connection to the number seven all over those case files," Deaton says darkly. "All their ages either contain a seven or are a multiple of seven. They all disappeared on the seventh, the seventeenth, or the twenty-seventh days of the month. A couple of their cars were recovered on highways or streets that contained the number seven."

Stiles catches his breath, his head spinning. "They found Lydia's car on Highway 57," he says in a hushed voice. "And she skipped a grade in elementary school; she just turned 21." Deaton inclines his head.

"There's evidence of the same burnt circles that appeared in the woods around the same times those people disappeared, as well," Deaton says. "Not in _every_ case, obviously, but I have documentation of it in 2012, '98 and '84."

Stiles closes his eyes briefly, trying to put the pieces together. "That's – okay. But Derek is different. He's the only one whose body was recovered. And he's older – he was 29, no seven, there. And the oldest of all the victims so far."

"And Lydia is the only one who reappeared," Deaton says. "Like you said – he traded himself for her. He managed to change the rules, somehow."

"Why didn't I find this?" Stiles mutters, in helpless frustration. "I combed the damn police database, looking for something like this. Why didn't I find this?"

"Because you were looking for something related to Derek's death, not Lydia's disappearance," Deaton says calmly. "Drink your tea, Stiles."

Stiles looks up sharply, startled, then to his tea cup, sitting forgotten on the coffee table in front of him. He reaches out and takes a shaky sip, barely tasting it.

"Now, there are still many possibilities," Deaton says, still maintaining that unruffled, steady calm. "Seven is an important number in almost every major culture and religion, so that in and of itself doesn't tell us anything."

"Seven bright pupils, seven toes and each hand seven fingers," Stiles mumbles. Deaton raises a single eyebrow. "It's from the _Táin_ – the _Táin_ _Bó Cúailnge_. It's an epic in early Irish literature about – "

"I'm familiar with it," Deaton says, sounding faintly amused.

"Right," Stiles says faintly. "You know what this is? This is freaking _Tam Lin,_ in real freaking life."

Deaton says nothing, just waits silently.

"Oh, shit," Stiles says. "No. Are you kidding? No."

"Werewolves exist," Deaton says unflinchingly. "The kanima. Witches. Hunters. The selkie. Is this the one that is too impossible to accept?"

"You're saying that fairies have been stealing people every seven years in Beacon Hills since the eighties," Stiles says flatly.

"There's a reason that shapeshifters are attracted to this region of the country, Stiles," Deaton explains. "Centuries ago, the humans who lived in this region were different, they lived in harmony with them for the most part; they didn't fear the supernatural, not like the settlers who came later, who were born and raised somewhere else. It was an attractive place for anyone who wasn't human. It's why there are so many old packs centered in the area, wolf families like the Hales who have lived here for generations.

"There are years of history in this part of the world, just as much as there is in places like Germany and France, where the legends about werewolves got their start. That many beings with that much power, in one area, for so long? It's bound to draw attention. And not just from hunters."

"How do you know that this is what this is, specifically?" Stiles asks, shaking his head. "Like you said, seven shows up everywhere. How do you know this isn't like, a spell that uses the number to enhance its power? Or some other being that we don't know about that's just capitalizing on the fairy lore?"

"Those stories have survived this long for a reason," Deaton says gravely. "They might have less respect now than they did before, but they still exist. And as long as they exist, they have power."

"This is insane," Stiles mutters, staring down at the pile of reports in his lap. Each one has a faded picture of the victim clipped to the top and they fan out across Stiles' knees, staring up at him with blank, faded eyes.

"You don't believe in fairies?" Deaton inquires. "You don't think they exist?"

"No," Stiles bites out, a rising wave of despair welling up in his chest, threatening to sweep him away. "No, I know they exist. That's kind of the fucking problem."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little longer since I'll be out of town all next week and thus won't be able to update. :( Sorry! Enjoy! Hugs! See you in two weeks!

Stiles already knows fairies exist because he's met one. And so has Derek.

They'd been walking through the woods west of town, looking for some trailing white monkshood, which according to Deaton grew around the river and would be the safest way to put Erica under so he could pull her wisdom teeth. Stiles remembers bitching constantly about weird, werewolf surgery practices, and Derek responding mostly in growls and sarcastic comments, and before they knew it, they were lost.

" _How_ are we lost?" Stiles had asked incredulously. "I didn't know you were even capable of getting lost."

"I'm not," Derek replied, "this isn't – something's wrong," and Stiles heard the discomfort in that sentence and decided to shut up.

Stiles remembers it like he remembers dreams, wandering around a forest that seemed suddenly – different, somehow, its colors somehow brighter, its sounds somehow sharper. Things started to bend at the corners, and when Stiles looked at something directly it seemed thin, transparent, not completely there.

Derek stood close, touching Stiles' shoulder every few seconds, as if to make sure he was still present, and he was tense, every muscle coiled and ready to act. But he didn't notice the woman until Stiles did, his senses dulled somehow. Stiles could only imagine how disturbing it must have been.

"Hello," she said, in a crisp accent that Stiles didn't recognize. She had a cane, Stiles remembers. She looked old, but not because her skin was wrinkled or her back was bent or she looked frail – there was just something about her, the way she talked or held herself. But for some reason, he could never recall what she looked like – not even something simple, like the color of her hair or eyes. He just knew that she was beautiful, and old, and nothing else – it wasn't something Stiles could ever explain out loud. "Would you like some tea?"

"Who are you?" Derek barked. "Where are we?"

The woman just blinked. "It's tea time," she said. "I have biscuits, too."

Stiles let Derek edge in front of him, taken aback by the sudden, eerie stillness of the forest. "What tea," Derek said rigidly. "What biscuits?"

The woman stepped aside, and suddenly there was a table, with a tea service and a plate of cookies, still steaming hot. Stiles couldn't explain how it appeared but just that it did, like one minute there was nothing and the next there was something, something that seemed so normal that it must have been there all along, even though it hadn't.

"There are cigarettes," the woman continued, backing up slowly into one of the chairs, padded with a green cushion that matched the moss crawling up the tree bark all around them. "Or snuff, if you prefer, though I'm told that's gone out of fashion recently."

Stiles opened his mouth to say something, but Derek grabbed his wrist, squeezing it hard. He was holding himself tensely, his face was guarded, and Stiles had long learned by that point to keep his trap shut when Derek looked like that. 

"You're one of the Others," he said. "The Good People."

The woman inclined her head. "You must be tired," she said. "All that walking. It's late. Have a spot of tea."

Derek seemed to hesitate, but he turned to Stiles and gave him a look that said _follow my lead,_ and sat down at the table. Stiles followed suit without a word.

So they drank tea, and Derek took one of her cigarettes but didn't smoke it, and they didn't eat the cookies (at Derek's stern rejection) and when they were done, the woman smiled.

"You're a fine pair of boys," she said admiringly, "do you believe in God?"

Stiles blinked. 

"Yes," Derek said easily, and Stiles started blinking at him instead.

"Do you think I'll see the face of God?"

"Of course you will," Derek replied, still easy. _What the fuck,_ Stiles thought.

"Such fine boys," the woman said in satisfaction. "Run along home now, before someone comes out to look for you."

The second she said it Derek was on his feet, Stiles' hand in his, dragging him away. Stiles tried to keep the woman in sight, but she disappeared, along with the evidence of their surreal snack time, and the last glimpse he got of her, she was waving at him cheerfully, a smile on her face as creepy as anything Stiles had ever seen.

Derek refused to speak until they were well out of the forest, safely in the Camaro and within distance of the city lights. He still couldn't look at Stiles, every part of him tense and rigid, and Stiles was freaked out enough by Derek freaking out that he didn't question it.

"That was a fairy," Derek finally explained, hands tight on the wheel. 

"What," Stiles said flatly. "Fairy. Like Tinkerbell?"

"No," Derek said sourly. "Did she look like Tinkerbell? Tinkerbell doesn't kidnap people at random, Stiles."

"Actually she kind of did, if – wait, we were being _kidnapped_?" Stiles squeaked. 

Derek rolled his eyes. "They take mortals," he said, ignoring Stiles' dramatics, as usual. "My parents used to tell us stories about them. They really like werewolves, for some reason, and they need us there for certain rituals, like funerals and anniversaries – but they have rules, loopholes. If you don't eat their food, if you answer their questions the right way – "

"They have to let you go," Stiles finished for him, some half-forgotten story flitting through his head, a fragment of a passage he'd read while on the search for something else. "Jeez, does it ever end, with you? We can't even go for a walk without mortal peril?"

"Where exactly did you get the impression that a walk in these woods is ever _safe_?" Derek countered, and Stiles remembers that they spent the rest of the night from that point on bitching at each other, steadily growing louder and angrier in an effort to drown out everything else, both of them shaken by the close call but unwilling to admit it out loud. 

They never had any other encounters, but after that Stiles made a point to look into fairies, to read as much as he could about them, which considering that it's _fairies,_ is quite a lot. He helped _teach a class_ about them last semester, for pete's sake – but while the academic community is overflowing with folklore and literature on the subject, none of it could never even hope to describe the pure, otherworldly _strangeness_ of that afternoon. It remains one of the most terrifying and bizarre things that has ever happened to him, ever, which considering who he hangs out with is quite a feat, and not once in the past month, during the whole time Stiles and Lydia were tearing through every book on the West Coast for clues to whatever killed Derek, did it _ever_ occur to him that this was the answer. Not even once. And wasn't _that_ kind of weird. 

_Goddamn_ fairies. Goddamn. 

 

 

"Fairies," the Sheriff says.

"Yes."

"Fairies," Lydia repeats.

" _Yes_."

They both stare at Stiles blankly. His dad has a forkful of spaghetti suspended in mid-air, halfway between the plate and his mouth.

"I know how it sounds," Stiles says reluctantly.

"Do you," Lydia says skeptically. His dad just frowns. 

Stiles just shrugs and slides the reports on the missing victims across the table. It hadn't been difficult to look them all up, once he had their names and the years they went missing. He'd also been able to go back another twenty years before 1984 and find three more victims – still with all the same characteristics, seven years apart exactly, like creepy, supernatural clockwork. 

"I remember this case," his dad says with a frown. "Rebecca Tandy. She was fighting with her parents so I thought she ran away, but we couldn't find anything to prove it."

"She didn't run away, Dad," Stiles says, "she was taken. Just like everyone else in that pile."

The Sheriff just frowns deeper, flipping through the pile of reports in silence.

Lydia peers over his shoulder, then up at Stiles. "Deaton gave you these?"

Stiles nods. "I know it sounds crazy but it's a real thing, you guys. I've met one before."

"You met a _fairy_?" the Sheriff asks incredulously. 

"Yeah, well, it – it wasn't a big deal, really, more like a friendly afternoon snack, meet and greet, you know – "

"You never tell me anything," his dad says unhappily, "and that's not okay, Stiles. Do you see my face? Do you see how not okay I am with this?"

"It was like four years ago!"

"Okay, digressing," Lydia cuts in hastily. "So, you met a fairy. And Deaton thinks this is what killed Derek? And took these people?"

Stiles takes a deep breath. "Yes. I do too. Lydia – I'm sorry about this, in advance, just so you know – but I need to know what you remember."

Lydia drops the police report she's holding like it's on fire. "Nothing," she says edgily. "I – nothing. There's nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"Stiles," his dad says, reproachful, but Lydia sighs, shaking her head before he can continue.

"I – it was just a dream," Lydia says, sounding unconvinced. "Right? It had to have been just a dream."

Stiles moves to sit next to her, reaching out for her hand. She takes it and holds on tight. 

"Tell me," he says, and watches her shoulders slump, her head drop, her eyes flutter closed.

 

 

_I'd been in Beacon Heights all day visiting my mom, and I was driving back to meet Erica for dinner. I was on 57, coming into town, when my gas gauge just started dropping, like I was leaking gas or something. So I pulled over to the side of the road._

_I didn't even have a chance to turn the car off before I saw this – something in the middle of the road. I couldn't tell what it was, but it was bright, like – like a star or a mini sun or something. I got scared so I didn't get out of the car, and I went for my cell phone to call someone, and then that's the last thing I remember._

_Everything else is so…fuzzy, and weird, like – like a dream, or like the things that I…well, the things Peter was doing to my head. There was a woman there, I know that. I don't remember what she looked like or what her voice was like or anything, but she was old, and powerful, and she kept – kept touching me, like – not like that, just – my arm, my hand, my hair. Like a mom would touch you, you know? Protective._

_And the sky, I remember looking at the sky, for what felt like hours. Only it didn't look normal, the colors were all wrong, inverted. It was all these shades of green, like looking up at the canopy of the forest, only they seemed to be…moving, and swirling, like someone pushing paint around on a canvas. And the clouds were dark red, almost black, like blood looks when dries._

_I kept looking at it, and I couldn't look away, like I was trapped or hypnotized or something. I kept smelling food, like all my favorite kinds of food – and other things too, like the perfume my mom used to wear, and the way Jackson's car smelled when he would take me driving in the summer, and musty old library books, and jasmine, and it all smelled amazing – but I couldn't stop watching the sky, so I didn't look, I didn't see any of it –_

_And then, I don't know. Something changed. The woman touched me again – she grabbed my wrist – and it hurt. I heard Derek's voice, but I couldn't tell what he was saying. The sky started changing colors – everything turned darker, like the regular sky does before a storm, only this sky – it started, what, dripping? Melting? I don't know how to describe it. I still couldn't look away._

_Then I saw the bright star thing again, only this time it burned my eyes. Then I must've passed out again, or something, because the next thing I remember is waking up at the house with Erica and Boyd and everybody._

_I didn't tell them – didn't tell anyone – I thought it was just a nightmare. I thought, it couldn't be real, it was so – the way it_ felt – _like the whole time, it was like I knew I wasn't ever getting home. Knew it, in my bones, in every part of me. And I didn't_ care _. Whatever was happening to me, it made me not care, it made me…less, somehow._

_And Derek…I could feel him, too, I felt everything he was, like, feeling? Thinking? I don't know, it sounds so crazy – it was like I had lost my own feelings so his kind of took over, temporarily. He was angry – just really, really furious, and I could tell it was aimed at the woman. And possessive, and scared. And sad – God, Stiles, he was so incredibly sad._

_I didn't remember it all right away, not for the first few weeks, anyway. And I thought…that I made it up. That I felt guilty, and so it was a dream I'd had that I confused with reality. But if it wasn't, and if it really happened…_

_Stiles, she was so powerful. How are we supposed to fight that? What are we supposed to do?_

 

 

"We have to do _something,_ " Stiles says insistently. "It'll keep happening. They'll keep taking people, every seven years, unless we stop it. We have to figure out a way to make it stop."

"That's…Stiles," his dad says, watching both of them with worried, sad eyes. "Lydia's right – if these… _things_ are as powerful as they seem, what hope do we have of stopping them from doing anything? Even with a bunch of werewolves on our side?"

"Because we're not going to force them," Stiles says eagerly. "We can't, you're right. We'd lose. But we can negotiate." He reaches down to his bag with one hand, still clasping Lydia's hand in his other, and withdraws a slim tome that Deaton had reluctantly surrendered. "There's a spell to summon a fairy in here. If we can find everything we need to perform it, we might be able to convince her – him, it, whatever – to leave Beacon Hills alone."

Lydia eyes the book with no small amount of trepidation. "You want to negotiate with a kidnapping, murdering, all-powerful _goddess_? Because that's what she was, Stiles. A freakin' _goddess_."

"That's what Derek did," Stiles argues. "And he won. Or at least was able to accomplish his goal – he got you back. Why can't we do the same thing? Trade something in exchange for amnesty for our town?"

The Sheriff's expression turns instantly thunderous. "No one is sacrificing themselves for this," he says angrily. "You hear me? _Nobody_."

"Of course not," Stiles soothes. "Of course. But there are rules. There have to be rules, otherwise how would Derek have been able to beat them? And I have something they want."

"What?" Lydia asks warily.

"A favor. From me." Both Lydia and the Sheriff look at him blankly. "Look, there are thousands of stories about fairies, okay, they show up in a lot of different cultures and mythologies. There's no real agreement on whether they're good or bad or what. Some of them think they're pagan gods that are slowly losing power, others think they're angels expelled from Heaven when Lucifer fell. But one of the really common threads is that there _are_ ways to negotiate with them. Because they _need_ us – for whatever reason they've been taking people, I'll bet you anything that they do it because they have to. They might be all-powerful, but if they were truly malevolent, the world would be a very different, much scarier place, wouldn't it?"

"Okay," the Sheriff says slowly, "but what makes you think these – all-powerful things would need a favor from you?"

"Because stories have power," Stiles says triumphantly. "For whatever reason, these stories about fairies all have some ring of truth to them. I've found – well, Deaton found – instances of disappearances, murders, strange occurrences that match up to well-known fairy lore and stories all over the world, some of them going back fifty, seventy-five, a hundred years. And there are tons – literally, thousands – of stories passed down in the Irish storytelling traditions of encounters with fairies, all of which came from _real people,_ not authors or poets. Most people think it was a form of community entertainment in Ireland before the advent of television or radio, but now we know better, don't we?"

" _Tam Lin_ ," Lydia says suddenly, brow furrowed. "People disappearing every seven years…it's _Tam Lin_. The fairies taking humans to pay the tithe to Hell."

" _Hell_?" Stiles' dad says incredulously.

"We don't know if that part's true," Stiles says hastily. "But look – if all of these stories are based in truth, which I think they are, then fairies need us for certain things. They try to take us, to trap us, but not always – for some things, rituals like funerals, or weddings, or games or commercial transactions, they need humans present, for whatever reason. There are tons of stories of people who ran into a fairy one night and were forced to attend some fairy cricket game, or a handfasting ceremony."

"So you think you can offer yourself as a witness for one of these things," his father says unhappily, "and they'll just, what, agree to stop kidnapping people?"

"There's always my magic," Stiles says, wincing. "That's got to be incredibly valuable. But I have to _try_ , Dad."

"No, _you_ don't," the Sheriff says. "If anyone is going to do this, it's got to be me."

"No, are you kidding? No," Stiles replies staunchly. "Look, I just told you, this is about _stories._ If anyone is going to do this it's gotta be me, you know, the one who's writing a _graduate thesis_ on this topic."

The Sheriff huffs angrily, running a hand through his hair. "What on this green earth makes you think I'm going to let you just waltz in to – "

"Dad," Stiles interrupts, "listen to me. This is different than what Derek did. I'm different. Derek wouldn't – the way he thought about things, he wouldn't have even _tried_ to find another way. That's just the way he was, trying to figure out how to get himself out alive too probably didn't even occur to him." Stiles' voice breaks slightly at the end, but he clears his throat determinedly and keeps going. "I'm different, I'm smarter than he is. I know more, and they have _rules,_ rules that I _know,_ that I've _researched._ I can absolutely figure out a way to negotiate with them and get out of there in one piece."

"But you don't know for sure," the Sheriff says, voice thick. Beside him, Lydia bites her lip, looking down at her lap. 

"Just like you don't know for sure whether or not some crackhead will stab you in the chest tomorrow on patrol."

"That's different."

"Is it?" Stiles asks stridently, hand clenching around Lydia's. She squeezes back silently, staring at the table, obviously uncomfortable but unwilling to leave. "I'm the only one who can do this, Dad, I am literally uniquely qualified to do this. And if I don't, they will keep _taking_ people, _forever_. This is not just about avenging Derek, this is about helping people, and I have a responsibility to do it if I have the capability, which I do. You were the one who taught me that."

The Sheriff stands up from the table abruptly, walking straight out of the dining room and into the living room. A few seconds later the back door slams distantly and Stiles lets out a long, tense breath.

"Are you sure about this," Lydia says to break the silence, more of an unhappy statement of truth than any kind of question.

"There's no other alternative." Stiles shakes his head once, reaching for the book from Deaton. "The spell in here, though, it's not an easy one. According to this, fairies can't take corporeal form in our world, that's why they always bring people over to theirs. We need an Alpha who is willing to be the vessel so we can communicate with the one that we summon. Apparently they're the only being on Earth that can handle it without, well. You know."

Lydia blinks. "An Alpha?" she asks. "Fresh out of those."

Stiles rubs his forehead. It hasn't escaped _anyone's_ notice that the one thing Derek didn't pass on was his Alpha status, apparently. If Boyd, Erica or Isaac know why, or have any opinion about this whatsoever, they haven't been sharing. 

"Well, we've got to find one. We'll trick one if we have to. Something. Deaton says that this is literally the only spell in existence to actually summon a fairy – and it was hard enough to get ahold of as it is."

"And we trust him now?"

"Well, you know." Stiles shrugs wearily. "Options. Fresh out of those, too."

Lydia takes the book out of Stiles' hands, opening it to the bookmark. Her expression is strange, twisted into some emotion that Stiles doesn't recognize on her face. "If you really think we can – I – Stiles – "

"What is it?" Stiles presses. "Lydia."

Lydia turns her face away, lifting one hand to her mouth. When she turns back, she looks – sad. Guilty. Awful. 

"I think I know who can help," she says heavily. 

 

 

The story with Jackson was, there wasn't one. Much of one, anyway. 

He disappeared the night after their high school graduation, leaving no trace behind except a pair of devastated parents, not to mention Lydia. Derek, Isaac and Boyd spent all summer trying to track him down to no avail, and eventually they all had to accept – or at least acknowledge – that whatever had happened to him was something beyond their reach. 

Lydia went off to school and buried her grief in work, and the rest of them carried on, like they always had, maybe a little more reluctantly than they had before. They'd never actually lost one of their own before – anyone they really cared about, anyway. Or anyone who wasn't better off being lost, rather. 

Jackson was officially declared presumed dead by the police about a year later, when his Porsche showed up in a parking lot by the beach, about thirty miles outside of town. The official theory was that it'd been stolen and abandoned, but Derek had said that his scent was so strong inside of it that there was no way he hadn't left it there himself, deliberately. 

"He left," he'd said flatly, "he left the pack, on his own. Even if he'd been coerced by someone or under a spell there would still be other scents in the car, but there wasn't. Just him."

"You think Lydia knows where he is?" Stiles had asked. Derek had shrugged. 

"She wouldn't tell us if she did," he'd replied, and that had been the end of it. Had to be; they couldn't waste time looking for someone who probably didn't want to be found, not with the variety of other threats and problems to choose from. 

Apparently Derek's overly paranoid nature had been right, at least this time. 

"I cannot believe you," Stiles hisses at her, "like I literally cannot, what were you _on?_ His parents think he's dead!"

Lydia doesn't even look over from the driver's seat, although Stiles sees her hands tighten on the wheel. "He told me not to tell anyone," she says defensively, "he said if I did, then he'd cut off contact with me, too."

The hint of desperation in her voice probably the only thing holding Stiles back from just ripping into her, because seriously, _what the hell._ "Okay," he says, forcibly calm, "then what the hell is _he_ on? The Alpha pack? _Really_?"

"He wanted to be one," Lydia says sadly. "Wants to be one. Apparently there's a way to do it without killing another Alpha and taking over their pack. Like through – meditation, or something."

"You're telling me he ran away to join a – a werewolf _convent?_ "

"Kind of!" Lydia yelps. "I don't know! All I know is what he told me, which isn't much!" She stops at a red light, hitting the break hard so that they both lurch forward in their seats. "Look, we were having problems, right, and he kept going on and on about how we should just leave and start our own pack, away from all of you – " Stiles winces, and Lydia bites her lip, shooting him a glance from beneath her eyelashes. "I said no, obviously. I mean, not that things weren't the definition of shit back then, because they were, but I wasn't going to just – _run away._ Like that would've solved everything – please." She sounds offended by the very concept. "Besides, I was going to college, I wasn't going to give that up. Not even for Jackson."

Stiles leans forward and rubs his forehead, feeling a headache start to throb right between his eyes. "Well, did he do it?" he asks. "Did he reach Alpha nirvana or whatever?"

"I don't think so. If he had he would've come back to get me," Lydia says. She sounds absolutely confident in this. "He calls me every year or so, to let me know he's still – okay." Her voice wavers slightly. "I don't think he knows about Derek yet, he always asks me all these questions about everybody, so I don't think he's getting information on us from anywhere else."

"So the Alphas aren't watching us, then," Stiles replies, "or if they are they haven't told him."

Lydia shrugs. "He's not due to call me for another few months, but a few years ago he gave me this address, told me that if I ever needed him that I could show up and he'd know I was there. So." She gestures at the street vaguely. Ahead of them, the light turns green and she lays into the gas, knocking Stiles back against his seat again.

"What happens when we show up together?" Stiles asks, clutching the door handle instinctively. "He's not my biggest fan, you know – I can't imagine that's changed after five years of yoga and chanting."

"You're with me," Lydia says simply, but that simple confidence she'd had before is definitely gone now. Not a great sign. "He won't like, hurt you or anything."  
Stiles hadn't actually been thinking Jackson would hurt him, but he definitely is now. "Great. Reassuring, thank you."

"If you want to do this spell, we need an Alpha," Lydia says impatiently. "And Jackson is the best way to get to one. Unless you want to just walk up to a random pack and ask to use their leader's body for a summoning spell?"

Stiles can't imagine that going over too well, no. Not even with that friendly Alpha from Seattle that he'd met a couple years back, Simone. She'd liked Stiles, but she hadn't liked Derek. But that was most people, really. 

"Does anyone else know about this," Stiles asks quietly. 

Lydia glances over at him, guilt written all over her face. "Just Derek," she replies softly. "Jackson sent me a scarf, in the mail, a present for when I won the Goldwater scholarship. Derek was there when I opened it, he smelled it."

"Oh, and how'd he take that?"

Lydia shrugs. "He was angry for a few days, but after that he seemed to understand. Or pretend like he understood, around me, at least."

"Wow," Stiles replies, kind of impressed despite himself.

Lydia glances over at him again, a different look on her face this time. "You don't know," she says, "you don't know how much he'd changed. He treated you the same as he always did, and when you were home he acted like he did before, but when you weren't around…he was different."

Stiles clenches his jaw against the stab of instinctual hurt at this. "Different how?"

"Less angry. More willing to listen. I don't know, he was just a better leader, Stiles. He started taking care of us instead of trying to defend us. It made all the difference."

Well. That's awesome. Just amazing to hear. "So you're saying that I was the only one that made him revert back to asshole mode?"

"You did the same exact same thing," Lydia says pithily. "Did you think you were hiding it? Did you _actually_ think you were being subtle?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, yeah right." Lydia stops short at another light, the last one before the exit to the interstate. She doesn't look over, but she clenches her hands on the wheel, the veins in her wrists bulging grotesquely. "Tell me again that you're doing all this to _protect_ people, Stiles. Tell me again how this is all just a noble quest to defend our town from evil." Her voice is twisted with contempt. 

"That is what this is about!"

"I am in this too," Lydia says furiously, whipping her head around to glare daggers at Stiles. "Don't lie to me, don't disrespect me by expecting me to eat the same bullshit you've been feeding everyone else – this is about _Derek_. Of course it's about Derek. Fuck anything else, right?"

"You are the absolute last person to lecture me on what's noble or right," Stiles snaps. "Hiding it from us is one thing, but you went to his _funeral_ , Lydia. You helped his mother pick out his freaking _gravestone_."

"I know that!" Lydia shouts, swiveling back around to face the street. "You think I don't know that? I _know_ that."

"The light's green," Stiles says dully. Lydia huffs and steps on the gas, passing the interstate on-ramp in favor of a gas station down at the end of the block. She pulls the car into a parking spot and throws it into park haphazardly, slamming her palms against the wheel with a muffled slap. 

"You want some snacks for the road?" Stiles asks, as some kind of misguided attempt at levity. He gets another glare for his trouble. 

" _Tam Lin_ had a happy ending," she says, ignoring his comment as completely as it deserves. "Janet got her lover back. Right? Is that how this is going to go?"

Stiles scoffs. "Tam Lin got kidnapped, not burnt to death," he says flippantly. "Are we going or staying? How far away is this lovers' retreat of yours, anyway?"

" _Stiles_." Lydia adopts her no-nonsense, Queen of the School glare, an expression that has largely disappeared in the past five years but still rears its head in the important moments, moments like this one. "Either you're honest with me now or I dump your ass right here and drive straight to Boyd and Erica and tell them everything."

Stiles frowns at her, betrayed. "You wouldn't."

"I really, really would."

Stiles leans forward, rubbing his palms over his face, thinking, _maybe she's right. Maybe I'm being selfish. Well, I know I'm being selfish. But maybe I don't have the right to be, in this case._

"Okay," he says on a sigh, "okay. Okay."

 

 

"This is the part that I _know_ I will regret telling you," Deaton had said, his brow scrunched together, kneading his free hand against his knee slowly. "I hope this works out, Stiles, I really do."

Stiles just frowned, reaching out and taking the small book from Deaton's outstretched hand. The cover was burnished gold, and the script on the spine was in Gaelic.  
"What will work out?" he asked absently, entranced.

"Forty-two years ago something like this happened in a town called Haven's Gate, in rural Ireland. A young Alpha werewolf was found burnt to death, in the exact same manner as Derek, in his own territory. His Alpha status died with him, just like Derek's. And a member of his pack had disappeared and reappeared the same day he died. Just like Derek."

Stiles stared at Deaton's stony expression, then down at the book. He opened it carefully, and inside, on the first page, an inscription in handwritten ink read, _Aoife Mag Aoidh, 1975 – 1977._ It was someone's journal, he realized. "Where did you get this?"

"You're not the only one who was investigating Derek's death, remember," Deaton says cryptically. "That belonged to the Alpha's mate, Aoife Magee. She recorded all the events, in very specific detail, from the moment her packmate disappeared, to her Alpha's death, to his resurrection."

" _Resurrection_?" Stiles said, startled. He dropped the book in surprise, wincing at the clatter.

Deaton frowned. "Yes. She was able to retrieve him."

Stiles stared some more, his breath caught in his throat. "You're saying this Alpha wasn't really dead," he said, pushing the words out through frozen vocal cords. "You're saying – oh my God. A changeling."

Deaton nodded. "Yes. Aoife discovered that the body was not the real one of her Alpha, but a piece of fairy magic enchanted to look like him – a changeling, some call it. She found a spell to summon the fairy responsible, and she was able to bargain for his life." Deaton inclined his chin toward the journal, still lying abandoned on the floor. Stiles blinked, reaching down and snatching it up quickly. "It's all in there – the spell she used, how she figured it out, the meeting with the fairy, the conditions of the deal. Everything."

Stiles flipped through the pages gingerly, the thin paper slipping beneath his shaking fingertips. "What happened to her? Them? Are they still alive?"

Deaton shook his head. "No, Stiles. She was much older than you. Aoife was almost fifty years old when this happened. She died of natural causes almost ten years ago, and her mate was killed by a rival Alpha a few years after that."

Stiles let the journal fall open to an entry that had obviously been creased open by many other hands, the scrawling lines of text smudged and retraced several times in ink. It was obviously some sort of spell; Stiles wasn't fluent in Gaelic but he was familiar enough with it to recognize certain words – _mix, draw, chant, chalice._

"You think this is what happened here?" he asked, or more like choked, for all the control he had over his voice. "You think Derek could – that he might – "

"I don't know," Deaton interrupted sternly, "but it's too much of a coincidence for it not to at least be a possibility. Stiles – _Stiles._ Listen to me." Stiles looked up from the pages, only really halfway seeing Deaton's face, lit up by the low light of the lamps and the flickering glow of the fireplace. "This is not a promise. Not a guarantee. Do you understand? Fairies are dangerous, unpredictable, _powerful_ – more so than anything you've faced before. And Aoife had to face a great many trials before she got her mate back – some of which were so terrifying to her that she couldn't even bring herself to write them down. This is a risky, dangerous long shot, at _best._ "

"Then why are you telling me this?" Stiles had said wildly. "Why give this to me at all?"

Deaton sighed then, looking tired. Tired, sad, and old. "Did Derek tell you that I knew his mother?" he asked abruptly. Stiles reared backwards, surprised, nodding his head in the affirmative. "I've been watching out for that family my entire life. I couldn't protect them from the fire, I couldn't protect Laura from Peter. I couldn't protect Derek from this." He shook his head. "Maybe you can succeed where I didn't. Maybe you can make up for my failings."

Stiles blinked slowly, watching Deaton's shoulders, slowly slumping downwards. "Who are you?" he asked. "What do you really do? The truth, this time. None of that 'family friend, self-educated' bullshit."

Deaton smiled faintly. "I'm a guardian," he said. "That's the truest thing I can tell you."

Stiles just shook his head, looking back down at the journal, the spell that could be the key to everything, to the impossible. 

"If there's anyone that can do this, it's you," Deaton said, sobering. "You're so young, though, I – Derek would never forgive me if he knew I was doing this."

"Derek treated me like a toddler," Stiles said flatly. "He was happiest when I was locked in a panic room surrounded by mountain ash."

Deaton made a soft noise of agreement. "He was quite protective of certain people," he said, a twist of wryness to his voice. "I wonder why."

Stiles jerked his chin away, almost stung by the comment, somehow.

Deaton drained the last of his tea and sat back in his chair, rubbing at his beard, now speckled with grey. "I've always tried to do my best to do the right thing, I hope you know that, for all that I've withheld and lied about. But this, this I'm not so sure. I just don't know."

Stiles swallowed the lump in his throat with no small amount of difficulty. "Thank you."

"Sure," Deaton said, irony twisting his smile into something sad, bitter. "Tell me that after this is over."

 

 

Lydia sits for a full minute in complete silence, staring at the gear shift like it contains all the answers to the universe. 

"Lydia?" Stiles asks tentatively. 

Lydia looks up, blinks once, and then reaches out and punches Stiles in the thigh. _Hard._

"You inconsiderate _asshole!_ " she exclaims, and then punches him again. Stiles yelps, launching himself backwards against the window to escape her fists of fury. "You were just gonna waltz into this cold? Without telling anyone? What if you'd _died_? What then? What about your _dad_? Why are you such an idiot?"

"Ow, _ow,_ mercy, mercy!" Stiles holds up both hands, flinching when Lydia makes another move to punch him, smiling a nasty grin of satisfaction at his reaction. 

"Don't push me."

Stiles huffs, eyeing her hands warily, still clenched into fists. "Fine. No pushing, got it. I'm sorry, okay? I was going to tell you, really. Just not in front of my dad."

Lydia looks even more disapproving at that. "This is such a stupid plan," she mutters, turning back to the wheel and crossing her arms across her chest. 

"Oh, I'm aware," Stiles says on a laugh. "Very aware. But it's the only one I've got." Lydia snorts. "What would you do if it were me? Or Jackson? Or Erica or Boyd? This is part of the kind of life we live. It's something I have to do, and you don't have to approve, but don't act like you don't understand why."

Lydia just keeps frowning at the windshield in a distinctly _sulking_ sort of manner, not that Stiles would ever accuse her of that out loud. If he wanted to live, anyway.

"Are you going to help me or not?"

"Of course I'm going to help," she snaps, turning and pinning him in place with her glare. "But don't get any funny ideas about dying in some stupid self-sacrificing way, you feel me? I will chase you down and drag you back myself and we will have _words._ Don't forget I know your first name now _and_ how to pronounce it."

Stiles nods wordlessly, intimidated despite himself. After all, she's still _Lydia Martin,_ for all that's changed since they were fifteen. 

"Good," she snaps definitively, turning the ignition over with sharp movements. "Well, what the hell are we waiting around for, let's get on the road. Jeez."

Stiles nods and tries to look humble and agreeable and, rather astutely, decides not to say anything out loud for at least an hour.

"That's right," Lydia says in satisfaction, and pulls out of the parking space. "That's fine. It's gonna be fine."

He wonders if she's even talking to him.


	5. Chapter 5

Derek never dated - it was a point of contention between him and Erica, who was of the opinion that Derek (and more importantly everybody in his immediate vicinity) would be a lot happier and healthier if he got laid once or twice every couple of years - but Derek never listened. Not that Derek made a habit of listening to anyone very often.

Stiles remembers one woman who'd gotten close, someone from the Alpha pack, one of the low-rung ones that had stayed behind for a while after the _sort of peaceful but still watch your back_ accord they'd negotiated after Peter died. Her name was Ilana, and she _was_ an Alpha, but a sort of shy, nonthreatening one, and for a while nobody saw Derek without her standing silently somewhere in the background.

(Derek never slept with her though, and Stiles knows this because there was great debate - gossip, actually - upon the subject at the time, and Isaac swore over and over that while Derek might have been staying out longer and later and generally being more reserved than usual, he still always _did_ come back every night, and besides, Isaac would have smelled...well, that was creepy, yes, but still a fact.)

At any rate, Ilana slipped away as quietly as she'd come, just a few months after Derek and Isaac had bought (rented? Acquired) their condo. Stiles had still been deep in the midst of his weird thing/not-thing with Heather at the time, and had broached the subject out of some misguided attempt to help, in all of his wise "one sort-of girlfriend plus two Scott and Allison breakups plus a long-term committed unrequited crush" love life experience, obviously.

"Obviously," Derek had said, in a tone of voice that implied that it really wasn't.

"Hey, man, I'm just saying," Stiles persisted, "breakups are the worst. You wanna talk about it? No, of course you don't, you - quit flashing your red-eye at me, dude, that's creepy as hell."

"How is this any of your business," Derek said, more of a snarl than an actual question.

"It isn't," Stiles admitted, "I just - you know. You seemed bummed out."

"Bummed out," Derek repeated, like the words felt strange in his mouth. Stiles sure felt strange hearing them come out of it.

"Yeah." At that point, Stiles had reconsidered his own wisdom and was now plotting escape routes, both physically and conversationally. "Um. You know, I express concern after noticing your hardship in the interest of shared humanity and camaraderie - "

"I'm fine," Derek said shortly, already turning away.

"Of course you're fine, I didn't say you weren't fine, I said ' _bummed out_ ,'" Stiles said, because God forbid he let something lie for once, "I just - you know it was cool, right? Like with Ilana, or with anybody, like - Isaac and Erica and Boyd, they wouldn't mind if you - "

"If I what?" Derek asked, turning on his heel. Stiles' mouth closed with a snap. "No, Stiles, you were talking, please continue, if I what?"

"Er," Stiles replied, eloquently.

"Well then," Derek said, and made one of his _expressions_ , specifically the supremely bitchy one that Erica had nicknamed the 'Regina George face.'

"If you did something for yourself," Stiles finished, despite the somewhat numb, tingly feeling in his extremities. "No, uh, pun intended. That was unintentionally cheesy and gross, I promise."

Before Stiles was even done talking, Derek was already halfway out of the room, impatient disdain practically radiating off of him. "Thanks for the pep talk," he called over his shoulder, and left Stiles to make exasperated faces at himself alone.

For several weeks after that, Derek avoided the fuck out of Stiles at every turn, and it took Stiles that entire time to puzzle out that he'd insulted Derek, somehow, whether in the implication that Derek couldn't handle a problem like that on his own, or that Derek _had_ a problem like that at all, maybe.

So, yeah, Derek never dated, didn't even seem to want to, apparently. Which was cool, Stiles was cool with it, it's totally cool for someone to not-date, and he only hassled Derek about it occasionally, and was careful about it when he did, and Derek never seemed to mind, it just seemed like, there was something, and - yeah.

Stiles was cool with it.

 

 

Jackson and Lydia's lovers' retreat is about what Stiles would expect for a secret hideaway designed by Jackson – disgustingly expensive and pretentious.

"You have got to be kidding me," Stiles says.

Lydia, to her credit, looks about as incredulous as Stiles feels. "He – his trust fund, he hid most of it away in some offshore accounts before he left – "

"Did you just say 'offshore accounts' with a straight face – you know what, no," Stiles shakes his head, "don't answer that."

Lydia shrugs, pulling the car into park and shutting down the engine. It's taken them a few hours to get up here, and the sun is just about to set, casting long, amber shadows across their laps. "At least we'll be doing this in style."

"Right, can't go without style. Jesus." Stiles shakes his head and climbs out of the car, ignoring Lydia's narrow-eyed look.

It's about as large as Derek's new house and while it _is_ secluded – they must've spent at least an hour navigating the winding back roads through the mountains to get here, and there isn't any other civilization for miles – Jackson had obviously spared no expense. It's more of an _estate_ than a secret safe house, really. (Of course it is.)

"So, what," Stiles says, once Lydia has joined him at the bottom of the porch steps, "do we just walk in?"

Lydia shrugs. "I guess." She peers skeptically up at the front door. "…maybe I should go first."

"Uh, yeah. Good plan."

Lydia walks hesitantly up to the porch steps, stopping by one of the windows and cupping her hands around her eyes to look inside. Whistling through her teeth, she looks back over her shoulder at Stiles. "Looks pretty swanky," she says, waggling her eyebrows.

"Yeah, I think we've long established that your boyfriend is a spoiled trust fund brat," Stiles says dryly. Lydia just shrugs, smiling to herself. The look on her face is a little too fond, for Stiles' comfort. "Try the door."

Lydia wiggles the doorknob. "Locked," she says, frowning.

"What, are you supposed to break in?" Stiles asks. Relatively assured that an anvil is not about to drop on his head, he climbs the steps to stand by Lydia's side.

"I don't…hmm." Lydia's face is set in the expression she gets sometimes when she's working on a math problem or translating something. "Oh my God, wait a second." She whirls around and jogs back down the steps.

"Where are you going?"

"Just right – here." Lydia pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, aiming the lit-up LED screen at the ground, at the very edge of the foundation of the porch. "When we first started dating, I used to hide a house key for Jackson underneath this weird-shaped rock in our back garden. He used it to sneak in on school nights…" she trails off, bending over and using her cell phone to look closely at the ground in the fading twilight. After a few moments, she makes a noise of triumph and drops to her knees. "Oh my God," she says incredulously, "it's the same freaking rock."

Stiles bites back a sigh. "That's – very romantic, Lydia. Very nice."

Lydia doesn't seem to notice, her face lit up and a huge smile on her face as she holds up a set of keys in victory. "Jackson, you big idiot," she says to herself, shaking her head.

Stiles wonders, not for the first time since they'd left Beacon Hills, if this isn't going to end very badly for Lydia. "Come on," he says uneasily, "we should get inside before it gets completely dark."

Lydia blinks, then seems to shake herself, climbing to her feet and brushing the dirt off her jeans. "Right," she says, and her expression falls back into the set determination from before. "Right, sorry."

"It's okay," Stiles says dumbly, stepping aside to let Lydia move past him and unlock the front door.

"You better stay behind me," she says, opening the door cautiously and peering inside. "Just in case?"

"Uh huh," Stiles says warily, and falls in step behind her.

It is _very_ lavish inside – not that Stiles was expecting anything else – but for all the expensive furniture and decoration, it doesn't look like anybody has been here recently at all. Lydia and Stiles go through the entire place, practically glued to each other's side, but there doesn't seem to be anything here but the entire contents of the Williams-Sonoma Home catalog.

"How exactly is he supposed to know you're here?" Stiles asks, stumped. They've stopped in one of the – living rooms, he guesses, there are like two of them – and Lydia is occupied with the bookshelves, which are fully stocked by somebody who obviously knows her very well.

"He's probably got some kind of surveillance," Lydia says absently. "He can afford it. The power's on, after all - maybe he stays here? Or he keeps it running year-round? I never knew how much his trust fund actually was, but Jackson's always been good at managing money."

Stiles remembers all too clearly how Jackson used to throw it around back in high school, and if that was managing it _well_ – Christ, it makes his head hurt a little. "Uh huh."

Lydia turns around briskly, rubbing her hands together. "Right, okay. It's getting late, so we should eat something and then crash – it might be the only chance we'll get for some sleep."

"I'm not sure how comfortable I am about sleeping in this creepy place," Stiles says indignantly.

"We can sleep in shifts if it makes you feel better, _Derek,_ " Lydia says pointedly, rolling her eyes. "But I'm pretty sure that if we're going to get murdered by the Alpha pack, there's not a whole lot either of us can do other than hope it goes quick."

"I meant I don't want to sleep in your disgusting love mansion, actually, but uh – the danger thing, that too," Stiles replies, even more disturbed than before.

"Would you prefer the car," Lydia says, profoundly unimpressed. Stiles decides to shut up.

Dinner is pre-wrapped turkey sandwiches from the last gas station they'd stopped at and bottles of water, in unspoken agreement to hold off on raiding the kitchen. There's no cell service, but there's internet and cable TV (…of course there is) so Stiles shoots off an email to his dad and Scott with precisely enough detail to keep them from sending out search parties, but no more than that.

Lydia must be more disconcerted about all of this than she's been letting on though, because she sticks close all evening and doesn't once mention anything about exploring. They even end up sleeping in the biggest living room, near the back of the house – because for some reason, passing out together in one of the bedrooms while in Jackson's giant house seems like a really, really bad idea, no matter how platonic or innocent an action it might be.

"Stiles," Lydia murmurs at some point, long after they've gone through the motions of turning the lights out and lying down on their respective couches. Stiles is under no illusions that either of them are going to get any actual rest tonight. "Are you mad at me?"

Stiles stares at the dark ceiling and considers this. "No," he finally settles on, mostly because the vulnerability in her voice is really supremely _not_ okay. "I guess not."

"Good," Lydia replies, after a long moment of silence, "that's good. I'm glad you're not, Stiles."

Stiles swallows against the sudden lump in his throat.

"Because I don't know what's gonna happen," Lydia continues, sounding much younger than she is, "and I hate you most of the time but you're also one of my best friends and it's good that we're doing this together, you and me."

"I hate you too," Stiles replies, a little shakily, "I hate you so much, oh my God, you've got no idea, the depth of my hate."

"Flames on the side of my face," Lydia says.

"My burn book is your childhood photo album."

"I use your name as an insult because you disgust me so much."

"I love you," Stiles says, squeezing the words out halfway through a painful laugh.

"I love you back," Lydia replies.

 

 

_12 April 1977_

_This will be my last entry._

_I was successful and Michael is alive again, returned to me…I feel such joy and grief at the same time, I almost cannot understand. I feel so different. Everything that's happened…I don't know how to explain it. I tried to talk to Brigit, early this morning, but I couldn't say anything. All I did was cry._

_All Michael has done since we returned is sleep…he sleeps now, a few feet away from me. We've spoken only once, and not for long. Perhaps there's just too much to say._

_I meant to write it down. I thought that I should, to record what has happened like I've recorded everything else, but even now, my hand shakes as I write this. There's a great fear inside of me now, and in Michael too, I can tell. What we did, what_ I _did, it was not something we were meant to do, or see. I'm afraid I will feel like this for the rest of my life: scared, and ashamed. Guilty._

_I try to remember that what they did to us was wrong. They should not have done what they did to Michael, or to me, or our pack. They hurt us, and I fixed it. But I cannot take pride in it either, and I cannot help but feel that I should not have done it. As if it were not my place, even though it was._

_I thought I would feel relieved. That if I could get him back, everything would be right again. Instead I feel as if my journey is just now beginning…that the road is suddenly much longer and more treacherous than it ever was, before._

_I end this diary with this, now, and I will hide this away until I decide what to do with it. I regret writing it, now that I know how dangerous it truly is, but I cannot bring myself to destroy it either, even though I should…another risk I will take. One I hope I will not come to regret. I already regret so much._

 

 

Whatever Stiles might have thought about what a reunion with Jackson Whittemore would be like (which he...really didn't think about, much, like not at all really), he probably would've been wrong, because it's the weirdest thing ever, actually.

Stiles was all ready to wake up to yelling or crying or violence but actually it's pancakes, prepared by the man in question himself, with gourmet high-end coffee probably crapped out by birds in South America and three different kinds of syrup, and muffins. Oatmeal ones, with honey butter.

Lydia and Stiles just kind of stand in the doorway of the kitchen and stare for a while, until Jackson finally looks up and goes, "morning," all cheerful like this is _normal,_ like this is a thing that Jackson Whittemore _does_ , just _makes breakfast_ in his ridiculous mansion safe house, because, well, why not.

"You fucking bastard," Lydia says, "those better be whole-grain."

"Of _course_ they are," Jackson says, sounding kind of offended, and yeah, that's how it goes.

He looks different - older, obviously, less roundness to his face and his hair a bit longer than he ever kept it in high school. He's lost that gym-toned fitness and gained something a little more authentic looking, like the way that Isaac and Scott always look, lean and fit from running and walking and working out in the sun. He's got a tattoo of the Alpha pack triskelion, emblazoned in red on his left forearm. Stiles catches Lydia staring at it, her face unreadable.

It's an odd sort of tableau, Lydia and Stiles perched unsurely on barstools at the counter and Jackson across from them, offering ridiculous-looking gourmet breakfast dishes like some kind of supplication. Stiles wants to leave them alone to hash out their loaded silence more than he's probably wanted anything else in his entire life, but Lydia's got a pretty mean grip on his wrist, so that's out.

For a final flourish, Jackson sets two cups of coffee in front of both of them, Lydia's doctored with probably the exact right amount of cream and sugar, down to the exact nanogram probably. Then he ducks his head, rubs the back of his neck and just sort of...stands there.

"Oookay," Stiles says. Lydia huffs and snatches a piece of turkey bacon.

"Are you gonna stand there like a creeper, or," she asks-without-asking, and Jackson sort of jerks in place.

"Uh, yeah, there's a chair in the - I'll be - " he says, and practically bolts from the room.

Stiles stares after him incredulously. "Uh," he begins, and hazards a look at Lydia, who despite still gripping onto Stiles' wrist like she's about to float away, seems thoroughly engrossed in her breakfast. "Are you...okay?"

"This is _so_ not the most stressful thing to happen to me this week," she replies, and squeezes his wrist one last time before letting go. Stiles figures that's about as okay as it can get.

"We should tell him," Stiles says.

"He can _hear_ you," Lydia says pointedly, gaze sharpening to a glare.

"Yeah, I totally know that, I just wanted to trap you into doing it," Stiles replies unrepentantly. Lydia rolls her eyes.

"Tell me what?" Jackson says, suddenly appearing in the doorway with a high stool that Stiles recognizes from the living room. Or one of them, anyway.

Stiles stares at him, a little bemused at the way he keeps ducking his gaze down and away, submissive in a way that Jackson never was before. That's definitely not going to get old anytime soon.

"Derek got murdered by fairies," Lydia says bluntly, and Jackson makes the same exact face he used to make whenever Coach Finstock would remind him that sharing is caring.

"What," Jackson says.

"It's actually not a joke," Stiles says, a little apologetically.

"You might want to sit down," Lydia adds. 

Jackson blinks, then obeys, somewhat mindlessly. "Like, what, Tinkerbell, or...West Hollywood?"

"How in the hell did you maintain a friendship with Danny Mahealani for _ten years_ ," Stiles asks incredulously. Both Jackson and Lydia ignore him. 

"Maybe you should explain, Stiles," Lydia says archly, "you're getting so _good_ at it."

"Me?" Stiles yelps. "Maybe _you_ should, he's your tragic James Dean romance."

" _Maybe_ we should start at the beginning," Jackson interrupts, a bit of that old haughtiness returning, "for those of us who missed it?"

" _Maybe_ you wouldn't have missed _anything_ if you weren't a fucking _idiot,_ " Lydia snaps. Stiles very nearly breaks into applause.

"Lydia," Jackson starts, looking pained, "I - "

"Nope!" Stiles claps his hands once, just to shut that shit down immediately. "Nope, nope, nope, rule number one: none of that noise when Stiles is in the room. Okay? Okay." Jackson snaps his mouth shut, looking somewhat mutinous, but Lydia just looks away mutely and sips her coffee, hands calm and sure around the cup. "Also, rule number two, Jackson? No sharp implements. Slide those babies back where they came from, Wolverine."

Jackson looks down at his own hands, as if surprised that they've suddenly grown claws, then looks quickly over at Lydia. "Right," he says, and Stiles watches as the talons melt away. "Yeah, okay."

"Thank you for your cooperation," Lydia says, cutting and perfect. Jackson flinches like she's just punched him in the face, which Stiles supposes she has.

"Uh, yeah," Stiles says awkwardly, to break up that weirdness if nothing else, "we're all...cooperating."

Jackson barely even twitches. "So Derek's dead," he says flatly, still looking at the side of Lydia's face. "And you think it was fairies."

Stiles doesn't say anything, too busy catching his breath at how easily Jackson was able to say it, so blunt and careless.

"We know it was," Lydia steps in, still with that smooth confidence that Stiles knows is probably her best defense against this situation. "But we don't think he's dead - not yet. We've got a spell, we think we can get him back. But we need an Alpha to be the conduit, and you're the only one we know who can help."

Jackson's mouth turns downward slightly, the only outward sign that he's affected by Lydia's businesslike demand whatsoever. "I'm not an Alpha yet," he says.

"No duh," Lydia says sharply, "do you or do you not live with an entire pack of them?"

Jackson jerks his chin to the side dismissively. "Right. Because that's simple."

"Nothing's simple," Lydia says meaningfully, and Jackson's shoulders slump.

"The detente holds as long as nobody violates the rules," he says, reluctance written in every line of his expression, "and ever since Pyrrha took over, things are a little less...strict, I guess. I could probably find you somebody that would be willing to help. It won't be easy though," he adds, almost like he's scolding them. "You'd owe whoever it is a favor, and owing anything to one of these Alphas isn't something you want to have hanging over your head for too long."

"More favors," Lydia mutters. "And here I am without any _Godfather_ jokes."

"Fine, it's fine," Stiles says dismissively. "Just - can you do it?"

"Of course I can do it," Jackson says, affronted. "I'm just pointing out that it's stupid."

"I think we're all well aware that it's stupid," Stiles says dryly. Lydia sighs long-sufferingly, leaning her head against her splayed-out fingers. "I also think we're all well aware that we're going to do it anyway."

Jackson's eyebrows pull together and he looks down at his hands briefly, one of them curling loosely into a fist on top of his knee. "Okay," he says, almost murmurs, again with that odd submissive air, "okay, I can do that. For you, Lydia, I can do that. I can do anything."

Stiles can literally feel Lydia freeze in place, like all the air around her has turned to solid ice. When he risks a glance at her face, it actually hurts to look at, there's so much history etched into the lines of her expression, six years of this - this weird fucked up whatever it is that she and Jackson have been doing, sharing this secret and waiting for a long shot dream to come true. Stiles thinks suddenly about those Whittemore family reunions that Lydia still goes to every summer, the dinners she has with Barb Whittemore every so often, the dogged phone calls and emails they all still get from Danny about the police investigation, have you heard about this and that, it might be a clue, maybe it's Jackson, maybe. What this must have been like for her, Stiles thinks, realizes, with a nasty jolt, that he doesn't know her nearly as well as he'd always thought he did.

Then again, he thinks, that awful jerk of surprise souring into something darker down deep in the bottom of his gut, the same could be said about any of them, all of them, really. The only thing they've got in common with each other is secrets, and that's always, always been true. 

Jackson rises his gaze slowly, as if afraid of Lydia's reaction. "I'll," he starts, faltering when she still doesn't react, just sits staring holes into the counter. "Let me go - make a call."

Stiles lets him go without a word, feeling the edges of Lydia's ice creeping up his own ankles, keeping him from reaching out. It's only when Jackson has disappeared through the door towards the back of the house that it begins to subside, the rigid of line of Lydia's shoulders collapsing all at once. 

"Are you," Stiles begins, and realizes he has no fucking clue how to end that sentence. Lydia's mouth twists into an ironic grimace.

"Ask me later," she says, and sips her coffee.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm back, I'm so sorry, shame on me :( I was distracted by weird RL things like "work" and "major life decisions" and "being drunk a lot," so I hope you'll continue to bear with me. I'm not giving up on this sucker after almost a year of work, rest assured.

Stiles took up smoking for a couple semesters in undergrad, mostly because the friends he'd ran with back then were all the chain smoking, tattooed, dreadlocked art major type, insufferable in the best way possible. It was nice to do something like that, something pointless and silly, just for its own sake. He'd been careful never to do it in California, to cut back a few weeks before flying home so the smell wouldn't linger on his clothes or in his hair, to never light up while on the phone with somebody.

He doesn't know why he hid it; it's not like anyone would care that much, other than his dad. Scott and Allison, maybe. But who even knows.

It's stress, he says to himself, sitting on Jackson's porch and staring at the timberline, rolling a half-empty pack of Camels between his palms. Stress and grief and tension. Like how his dad drinks, or Allison's punishing work outs, Boyd and Erica's disappearances. A crutch. Everybody's got one. 

Stiles stares at his cigarettes and thinks about lighting one, then decides against it, then reconsiders, back and forth, back and forth. If he's lucky, this dilemma will carry him through the rest of the night. 

He hasn't heard from Lydia or Jackson since they'd disappeared into one of the bedrooms, to talk or fight or have sex, whatever, Stiles is too exhausted to care. He feels wrung out, like a sponge that's been squeezed too hard and then left out to dry in its own soap scum - crusty and useless. Used up. He can't turn his head off - never could, really - but now it's like whatever discipline he'd managed to build up has all but vanished, leaving only the raw clockwork of his stupid brain, all the things that could go wrong, everything he did or didn't do, should or shouldn't, could or couldn't. What if this, what if that, definitely this and definitely not - over and over and maybe he really _should_ smoke a cigarette, fuck.

Derek had known about it. Hadn't said a word, but he'd known, Stiles was sure. 

The sun has risen to its highest point in the sky when Stiles hears the far-off sounds of a car engine, pulling him away from his should or shouldn'ts - unusual, yes, alarming, yes also. Jackson's cabin is at the end of a driveway almost a mile long, and the access road that leads up to it is a dead end anyway, so there shouldn't be _any_ traffic that they're not expecting - which, Stiles figures, they are. Whether good or bad, this has got to be Jackson's Alpha. 

Sure enough, the car that pulls up neatly next to Lydia's Nissan is a sleek Corvette, cherry red, of course, the customary Alpha pack color. It's well maintained, clean, gleaming brightly in the midday sun - the car of an Alpha and nothing less, for sure.

Stiles thinks about retreating, running inside and calling for Jackson - or Lydia - considers pulling out the vial of mountain ash in the pocket of his sweater, but does neither. What would it do, anyway - nothing.

The woman who emerges from the car doesn't _look_ like one of the most powerful creatures on the face of the planet, but they never do. She's kind of short, actually, with a heart-shaped face and long black hair pulled into a bun on the top of her head. She's Polynesian - Hawaiian most likely, judging by the plumeria tattoo behind her left ear - but other than that, she looks like a Derek Hale doppelganger - jeans, monochrome shirt, leather jacket, angry scowl. Stiles almost wants to laugh. Her eyes are already glowing red. 

"You're the human," she calls out, coming up the driveway in a lazy gait that Stiles knows is all affectation. "The one with magic."

"I don't have magic," Stiles corrects, his response to that question mostly autopilot at this point, "I just have - a susceptibility to it, or an awareness, or - uh, whatever. Yeah. That's me."

The Alpha regards him solemnly, her mouth still pulled downwards into a frown. After a moment, she seems to come to some kind of conclusion and nods, once, to herself. "I am Alpha Alaula Palakiko," she says, holding up her palm briefly before retracting it, as if she'd thought to shake his hand and then changed her mind. "Most people call me Palakiko - you can do the same if you'd like."

"Palakiko," Stiles greets slowly, nodding. He hasn't risen from his spot on the porch steps yet, which forces him to look upwards to see her face. Considering that he's probably taller than her standing up, he figures staying small at first is probably the right idea. "I'm Stiles. Most people call me Stiles."

"Stiles," Palakiko says, scowl deepening. "Is Jackson here?"

"Inside," Stiles says, and she nods once, moving forward towards the steps. "He's with - "

"Lydia Martin," Palakiko finishes for him. There's something to her tone that sounds almost - _long suffering_ , and Stiles really does laugh then, a little hysterically, because of course Jackson talks about her. "I know."

"Right, um," Stiles ducks his head, "I'll show you in."

"No need," Palakiko says absently, breezing past him and up to the front door, movements easy with familiarity. Stiles relaxes slightly, stays where he is. He doesn't need to warn them - there's no way Jackson doesn't know she's here by now. If he's any kind of real werewolf, that is. "Nice to meet you," she says, and pulls a lighter from her pocket, tossing it at him with a quick jerk of her wrist. "Those'll kill you, you know."

Stiles catches it easily, laughing again, incredulous and maybe a little exasperated, too. Alphas, he thinks. Always walking around like they're the villain of their own movie.

"Thanks," he says, and tips his head at her. Palakiko tips back, and disappears inside. 

Stiles watches her go, then turns back and looks at her Corvette, the flamboyant big sister to Derek's Camaro. He doesn't know whether to be creeped out or amused, and settles halfway between both.

Alphas, he thinks again, and pulls out a cigarette, because why the hell not.

 

 

Lydia beats him to the punch and joins him on the porch before Stiles can work up the energy to venture inside, a sour look on her face and her hair suspiciously disheveled. Stiles gives her the stink eye and she practically snaps her teeth at him.

"Don't even," she warns, and collapses next to him into - well, not a sulk, because it's still Lydia, but whatever the Lydia-equivalent of a sulk is. Dignified contemplation of less-than-ideal circumstances, or something. "Boyd called me."

Stiles blinks at her, taken aback. "What? When?"

"I don't know." Lydia rearranges herself primly, carefully smoothing out her skirt so it sits straight across her thighs. "Jackson did...something to my phone, so I could get service, and when it updated he popped up in my missed calls."

"Did he leave a voicemail?"

"Are you kidding? Boyd never leaves voicemails." Lydia shakes her head. "We're running out of time."

"I know." Stiles reaches out, knocks his knee against hers. The corner of Lydia's mouth turns up, ever so slightly. "You still okay?"

"Yeah." The veneer cracks just a little bit, enough for Stiles to catch a glimpse of the stress carefully tucked away beneath a layer of bravado and expensive concealer. "Yeah, how about you?"

"Eh." Stiles shrugs. "Been better."

"No kidding."

Stiles rubs at the back of his neck before he can stop himself, an obvious tell he still hasn't overcome. "So, uh, you and Jackson - "

"None of your damn business," Lydia says with a smile. Stiles laughs and knocks her knee again. This time, she knocks back.

It's only a few more scant minutes before Palakiko and Jackson emerge from the house, both of them frowning deeply and looking harassed. No blood, though, so. That's good.

"So?" Stiles asks, rising to his feet, quickly followed by Lydia. Jackson turns away immediately, locking the front door and fiddling with the door knob, and Palakiko takes a step forward, crossing her arms across her chest.

"You have this ritual?" she asks.

"Well, yeah," Stiles says, looking over at Lydia. Silently, she reaches down into her purse, pulling out the ritual, copied onto plain notebook paper. "You can keep that copy. It's a pretty simple thing, actually. You're the most complicated ingredient."

Palakiko takes the paper from Lydia, scanning it quickly. "And you think this will...bring Derek Hale back to life," she says slowly, skeptically, "bargaining with fairies."

"I don't know what it will do," Stiles says evenly. "And it's not just about Derek. I mean it is, but it's also - I mean, they've been taking people for years. Humans. Innocent people who did nothing wrong."

"Oh, well if _humans_ are in trouble," Palakiko says, rolling her eyes. Lydia tenses kind of obviously, turning her head away quickly and clenching her fists at her sides.

Stiles lets the comment slide away, ready for it. "They've done it before," he says. "That's where I got the ritual. This same thing happened to an Alpha in the seventies. If it's happened twice, it'll happen again, and keep happening. This isn't something we want to let them get away with."

" _We_ are not a 'we,'" Palakiko says archly. "There's you, and there's us. That's the truth. Derek Hale never understood that - a misconception he inherited from his family."

"Derek Hale understood that perfectly, actually," Stiles snaps. "More than you know. That's exactly _why_ he didn't treat humans the way your pack does - like cattle."

Palakiko's eyes, still a low-burning red, flare into twin pools of fire. Beside him, Lydia makes a low sound - whether panic or what, Stiles doesn't know. "You've got a funny way of asking for a favor, magic man."

"And you've got a funny way of saying yes, Miss Thing," Stiles replies. Palakiko sneers at him. "What? Like you'd drive all the way up here just to tell me no? Please. Save the melodrama for the CW, okay, I don't have the time."

Palakiko huffs. "The only reason I am here," she says, "is because I am Jackson's _episkopos._ "

"I...don't know what the hell that means," Stiles says blankly. 

"Good," Palakiko says, in a sort of childlike satisfaction. It'll probably be funnier later.

"Alpha pack thing," Jackson chimes in helpfully. Palakiko swivels her head around and shoots him a look. "It's kind of like - you know what, not important."

"What is that, Greek?" Stiles asks incredulously. "What - ohh, _Pyrrha and Deucalion_ , I totally just got that! You guys are _themed,_ that's so adorable."

"Stiles," Lydia hisses, death glare in full force. Jackson's got a similar one in place, along with a healthy dose of _what the fuck are you doing?!_ added to it. Stiles snaps his mouth shut. 

"Right," Palakiko says slowly, dry as sand. She folds the paper with sharp, precise movements and tucks it into her jacket. "Jackson, Lydia, why don't you go pick some flowers for each other or something. Give us a few minutes to talk."

"Oh, fuck that," Lydia blurts. Stiles quickly elbows her, cutting off whatever she's about to say next. 

"Uh," Jackson says, looking a little uneasy, "Alpha Palakiko - "

"I'm not going to eat him," Palakiko says with exasperation. "If I wanted to hurt anybody I would've done it already. Go."

"It's okay," Stiles says to Lydia, who bites her lip nervously, still clenching and unclenching her fists, over and over. 

"We'll be - right over there," she says warningly, as if she could really _do_ anything should Palakiko decide that Stiles' head would make a fine hood ornament for her car. Stiles feels grateful for the support nonetheless. 

Palakiko waits until Jackson and Lydia disappear around the back of the house to uncross her arms, still looking at Stiles with those eerie, constant-red eyes. "I can see why Deucalion liked you so much."

"Deucalion liked me?" Stiles asks, disturbed. Palakiko snorts. "Uh. Thanks?"

"You're welcome," Palakiko says, as if that was actually a compliment. 

"I'm sorry," Stiles says, shaking his head, "I'm getting whiplash here, are we friends now?"

Palakiko smiles, a shocking split in her expression. Stiles almost jumps. "Okay, okay, so I said the thing about Hale because I was trying to provoke you. My bad." She shakes a finger at him. "The cattle thing, though - that was good. That actually pissed me off a little."

"I think I'm confused," Stiles says slowly.

Palakiko just sighs, stepping down the porch steps and stopping to lean casually against the railing. She reaches up and tugs the tie out of her hair, letting it fall loosely down her back. Stiles watches the whole process warily, if anything more unnerved than ever by how normal she looks, how she could pass for a student in one of his classes in the right light. 

"Jackson said that he traded himself for Lydia," Palakiko says, after a long beat of silence. "What makes you think so?"

"The timing," Stiles says. Better to be honest than dead, he thinks. "Lydia reappeared - like out of thin air reappeared - at the same exact time that Derek died. Or when we...thought he did," he finishes awkwardly. "And - just, I know him, how he thinks. It's something he'd do."

Palakiko nods, as if confirming something to herself. "One of the noblest deaths an Alpha can have is a death in service to their pack," she says. "It's an honorable end. Are you sure you want to take that away from him?"

"Are you kidding me?" Stiles asks, exasperated. "You don't have to die to be honorable. Saving him isn't going to erase the enormity of what he did for Lydia."

Palakiko smiles faintly. "Derek might not think so."

"You obviously didn't know Derek," Stiles says pointedly. "Just because he always expected death didn't mean he _wanted_ it. The exact opposite, actually."

"I see." Palakiko gives him another one of those long stares, this one more thoughtful than the last. "Okay."

"Okay? 'Okay,' she says," Stiles says. "Does that mean I pass?"

"You'll do." Palakiko shrugs. "I'll help you."

Stiles lets out a breath of relief, one he feels like he's been holding for days. 

"Do you want to know why?"

"Not really," Stiles says honestly, his head spinning just a tiny bit. "Do you want to tell me?"

"Not really." Palakiko stands up straight rather decisively, turning back toward the house. "The rest of my pack will have to be told, but it won't be a problem. I'll come to Beacon Hills in three days and meet you - you'll need to be ready."

"No problem," Stiles stammers, blinking. He's discovering new ways to be taken off guard at every turn of this conversation. "Thank you. Really, uh - thank you."

Palakiko brushes it off. "Thank me afterwards," she says ominously. "This was the easy part, magic man."

 

 

Stiles really doesn't have actual magic. Really, really.

He can do little things that most people can't. Those concentration-type spells, and things that involve objects or other people that already have magic infused in them - mountain ash, certain kinds of wolfsbane, stone spellcraft, that sort of thing. Great in a pinch, but not exactly enough for a Hogwarts letter, is the bottom line.

Derek took him to this girl to get him tested, once. Deaton could've done it, but Derek was always more reticent about Deaton than any of them were, and anyway Stiles doesn't look a gift weekend-vacation-horse in the mouth, even if the full spectrum of Derek's grumpy faces does come along with it. Sometimes the grumpy faces make it better, even.

It was some girl Laura had known, apparently; her name was Jinny and she was a chiropractor in Seattle. Derek and Stiles drove up in the Jeep and stayed with her for a full three days, Stiles in her tiny guest room and Derek on this futon in her office that was so small it made him look ten times bigger than he actually was. She was extremely nice and seemed to like Derek, a rare thing, and chatted with Stiles about comic books while twirling incense around the room and making him hold various glowy objects. She made them dinner both nights and drank beer with Derek on the porch, talking for hours in low voices about - well, something Stiles hadn't been enough of an asshole to listen in on. Laura, maybe. Probably.

"There's a sort of - potential there," she'd said, looking Stiles in the eye and carefully ignoring Derek's tense presence, hovering just-so over her shoulder. "There's a word for it, in my language, but it's - you know, whatever. Complicated." She gave a rueful shrug. "Think of it like a foundation. You've got this real solid basement, you know, with strong pillars and concrete, a good start, but above that...it's all just empty space."

There was a long, drawn out moment of tension, everyone's breath holding at once, and then, Derek smirked.

"Thank you," Stiles said exuberantly, "for that. Derek, shut up."

"I didn't say anything," Derek said precisely. 

"You're so mean," Jinny said to Derek, or maybe both of them, in the sort of tone that meant she didn't think they were mean at all, and Derek's smirk softened a little, in a way that it rarely did, in a way that Stiles almost couldn't believe, whenever it happened.

"Besides, I didn't mean empty as in the absence of something, okay, maybe that was a bad metaphor," Jinny continued hastily. "Look, magic is - magic isn't something you possess. Where do you think it comes from?" She gestured grandly, like a game show host or a car salesman, _everything must go._ "Everywhere, every _thing_. Magic is, literally, what holds the universe together. You don't hold onto that, nobody can. Just, certain people can feel it, direct it. You have the - susceptibility, the _openness_ that a person needs to do that, but you lack the - the framework, I guess you could say, that you need for actual _control_."

"Magic makes the world go 'round?" Stiles asks dumbly.

"I thought it was the conservation of angular momentum," Derek deadpanned.

"That too," Jinny replied. She smiled and reached out for Stiles' hand, with that motherly sense of intuition she had, knowing the exact moment when Stiles could really use a touch of kindness. "Science and magic and God - it's all the same in the end. None of it means anything at all unless somebody believes in it." 

"And somebody believes in my - open spaces?" Stiles asked.

"I think somebody might," Jinny answered, squeezing his hand. 

Later, on the way home, Stiles let Derek drive and reclined the passenger seat all the way back so he could watch the stars through the sunroof, thinking about the basement of the house he'd lived in with his parents when his mother was alive, that walk-out patio where his dad kept the grill he never used, Stiles' crib that he'd never actually slept in, all the rows of shelves that held all of the stuff they didn't use anymore, old clothes and toys and books and photo albums full of pictures of old people. The mausoleum, his mom called it. 

Basements aren't foundations, Stiles thought. They're where you keep all the shit you don't need. 

"So," Derek said, "was that what you wanted to hear?"

"What did I want to hear?" Stiles asked, turning his head to look, genuinely curious.

"The fuck should I know," Derek said. "I don't even know what you're talking about half the time."

Stiles chuckled, feeling oddly proud of that estimation. "I guess it's what I expected."

"And that's good?"

"It's, uh," Stiles said blankly, "...what I expected."

Derek didn't respond, and when Stiles glanced over, he had one hand out the window and the other tapping out a rhythm against the steering wheel, casual and relaxed, like a California tourism commercial. 

"At least now we know," he finally said, definitively. 

"That I'm relatively powerless? I think we already knew that." Derek glanced over sharply and Stiles smiled sheepishly to soften the sentence. "Hey, look at me, totally cool about the lack of power. I have never been so happy to be boring, trust me."

"Boring isn't quite the word I'd use," Derek commented.

"Aw, dude," Stiles said happily, "that's so nice, look at you, just for that I'm gonna let you choose the radio station."

"Like you could've done anything about it either way," Derek replied, but it lacked the bite a comment like that would've had a year before.

"Thanks," Stiles said after a moment, "for this."

Derek ignored that, but he did turn on the radio a few miles later, to the alt rock station that they both liked, which was enough of an answer in and of itself. 

 

 

Stiles gets home around dawn, dragging himself in through the kitchen door in some naive stab of hope that his dad isn't awake. He's wrong, of course.

"Oh," says the Sheriff, freezing in front of the open fridge, eyes wide. He looks like he's been caught in the act of something, and Stiles thinks about all those crime scenes he kept getting caught at back in high school and only barely manages to hold back on some truly hysterical laughter. "You're home."

"Yup." Stiles takes a deep breath and tosses his backpack on the ground by the counter. "Uh. Good morning?"

The Sheriff scowls and shuts the refrigerator door with a definitive slam. 

"Right," Stiles says resignedly.

"You know, I thought a lot about how this conversation might go," his dad starts, obviously already raring to go. "I thought about it for two straight days, in fact, in-between texts to my wayward son who disappeared and turned off his phone after telling me about his plans to take a vacation to _hell._ So, you know, that was fun."

Stiles winces. "Okay, 'hell' is kind of a conclusion-jump at this point - "

"Did I say you could talk? Don't talk." The Sheriff crosses his arms, glaring, still somehow managing to look grumpy and intimidating while wearing a Styx t-shirt from 1981 and purple boxers. Stiles Stilinski's father, ladies and gentlemen. "I thought that I could approach this situation calmly and logically - the way you definitely _aren't -_ and handle it like a grown up, what with all my seasoned experience with your werewolf friend-problems and magical hoo-doo what not bullshit - "

"Hoo-doo?" Stiles blurts, unable to help himself.

"I will gag you," his dad warns. "But then I thought about it some more and decided, nope, not gonna do that. I'd much rather be an irrational, crazy old man. It's definitely more my style."

"Dad," Stiles says cautiously, "you haven't been rummaging through that black makeup bag in my bathroom, have you? Because you know those aren't human vitamins."

"Did you seriously just ask me if I'm high on werewolf pills?" his dad asks incredulously. "No, no - don't answer that. I'm stressed out enough already."

"I just - they look like regular vitamins, okay - I thought I warned you about them - "

" _Stiles_ ," his dad says in exasperation. Stiles shuts up. "Where were you?"

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it again, momentarily paralyzed on what to say.

"You've gotta be _kidding_ me," his dad explodes.

"Okay, okay okay! Okay, stop, I'll tell you," Stiles blurts. "Lydia and I went to see Jackson Whittemore, alright?"

The Sheriff stops short and blinks at him.

"Yes, _that_ Jackson," Stiles says, shifting uncomfortably. "Look, if it makes you feel any better I didn't know he was alive either until like, yesterday."

His dad gives a great sigh and pinches his nose. "Uh huh."

"Really, I didn't! He's the with Alpha pack now. Apparently. We - we went to see him so we could get an Alpha for the spell."

"The hell spell," his dad says. "Right. Of course, why not."

"We don't know that it's hell!"

"We don't know that it isn't, either!" The Sheriff throws up his hands. "I can't actually believe that I'm about to say this, kid, but actively trying to get to a place where _dead people go_ is _not a good thing._ "

"He's not _dead,_ " Stiles shouts, slamming his fist against the side of the cupboard, "for _fuck's_ sake!"

There's a long beat of silence that is, quite possibly, one of the worst moments of Stiles' life, what with the invisible mountain pressing in on his chest and the expression on his father's face, grief and pity and anguish and terror, all wrapped up together, embedded into the lines around his eyes, the clench of his hands on the edge of the counter.

"Son," his dad says heavily, and Stiles just - falls.

"Don't," he says frantically, but his dad just ignores him, sinking to his knees in front of Stiles and grabbing his shoulders in a strong grip. "Dad, I mean it - please don't - "

"Quit it," his dad orders, pulling him into the circle of his arms, "just, stop."

It's the smell that does it, his dad's cologne. It's the same one that he's been wearing for years and years, Stiles' whole life probably, and it always gets mixed up with all the other Dad-smells - gun oil and wet leaves and the musty old-wood scent of their house. Stiles kneels there with his face smashed in his dad's shoulder and smells all that and has a visceral, full-body flashback of every single time that his father has ever hugged him, and that's pretty much it: goodbye, game over.

It's like a scene from a Hunter S. Thompson novel, how the world kind of...stutters, all the straight lines suddenly going wavy and the colors inverting. There are black spots on the edges of Stiles' vision and his heart is pounding all of a sudden, racing so quickly it hurts, sort of like when he has a panic attack but different somehow, almost like - 

"Are you _laughing?_ " his dad asks incredulously.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Stiles says, gasping, "I'm - hold on - "

"Okay," his dad says, still holding onto his shoulders, "okay, so, not - what I expected exactly, but still worrying - "

Stiles can't answer, still letting his dad support most of his weight, laughing helplessly.

"Should I be doing something?" his dad asks uncertainly. "Calling someone?"

"It's just so," Stiles tries, "like how, what can I, what? What?"

"Okay," his dad replies

"This is so inappropriate," Stiles says, and manages to push himself backwards to sit on the floor, covering his face with his forearm. His side hurts like a bitch.

"Stiles," his dad says, very cautiously, "let's go upstairs, okay?"

Stiles holds out a hand, taking several deep breaths, letting the giggles fade away slowly until he's back on the right side of hysterical again. "Okay," he says, and takes his dad's arm, "okay, upstairs."

"Alright." His dad pulls him up, his expression still creased with sad concern. "You okay now? You want some water or anything?"

Stiles shakes his head in the negative. The laughter is still there, sitting right beneath his breastbone, but it's less urgent now. "Is now the part where I try to convince you I'm not crazy?"

His dad wraps one burly arm around Stiles' waist, steering him gently toward the back stairs. Stiles tilts his head to look up at him in the dim light. "That moment passed a while ago, son," he says wryly.

"Well, I'm not," Stiles says. 

"Sure," his dad replies.

Upstairs, Stiles receives the pleasure of being _put to bed,_ which in any normal emotional state would drive him nuts, but right now it's just kind of nice. His dad putters around the room afterwards, fussing with the curtains, moving things from one spot to another, turning the lights on and off, all with this look on his face that makes Stiles want to break things.

"Dad," Stiles says, and his dad heaves a great sigh and collapses onto the foot of the bed.

"I don't know how to help you through this," he says after a long silence, and rubs his hands through his hair with palpable frustration.

"You're doing fine," Stiles says dully. "Downstairs, I think you handled all that freaky clown laughter pretty admirably."

"Too soon, kid."

"Sorry." Stiles picks at the comforter, trying to gather words. "I - don't know how to help myself through it either, if that makes you feel better."

His dad gives him a look loaded with exasperation. "It's not your job to make _me_ feel better," he says. "I didn't mean - look, I'm not supposed to be putting more pressure on you. I'm supposed to help you carry some of it. If you'd let me, that is."

Stiles swivels his gaze up to the ceiling, doesn't reply. 

"I'm sorry this is happening. I'm sorry you feel the way you do right now, and I wish I could do something, even though I can't. And I'm sorry I can't support what you want to do, but I'm _not_ sorry for wanting you to be safe. I'll never be sorry about that."

"Dad," Stiles says, at a loss for what to follow that up with.

"I could tell you what everybody told me when your mom died," his dad continues, grimacing to himself, "like all that 'it'll get better with time' stuff, but even though it was true, it still didn't mean jackshit to me at the time, so." He shrugs helplessly.

Stiles swallows thickly. "I can tell you what might help right now," he offers. "We could just...sit for awhile? I think. That sounds good."

"Sure, of course." The Sheriff nods silently, reaching over and squeezing Stiles' ankle hard. "If it'll help."

"Thanks, Dad," Stiles says. He thinks it might.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles wakes up with a crick in his neck and piece of notebook paper taped to his forehead, courtesy of his dad. The note is written in green Sharpie and reads, _had to go into work, please don't go to hell before I get back, thanks._ Stiles laughs all the way through his morning routine, thinking about it. 

That lasts as long as it takes for him to check his phone, where he's got a series of angry/frantic texts from just about everybody. Stiles scrolls through them with a fatalistic sense of resignation, and opts to call Scott first, because he at least might be nice about it. 

" _Dude_ ," Scott says.

"I know," Stiles replies. "Level with me, how pissed off are you? Scale of one to Gordon Ramsay."

"I'd say we're at about a Charlie Sheen," Scott replies. "Like. What the fuck, man?"

"I'm sorry," Stiles says sincerely. "I had to."

"Uh, you really didn't," Scott says. "At least not by yourself."

"I wasn't by myself," Stiles protests.

"Oh, sorry, my bad, you were with Lydia, who obviously has grown superpowers since the last time I saw her," Scott drawls. "You both could've been _killed._ "

"Do you pull this 'human-in-distress' routine with Allison?" Stiles asks irritably. "Because it's really condescending. In case you didn't hear me the last gazillion times I've told you that."

"It's a valid concern!" Scott yelps. "The guy with the gun is always gonna beat the guy with the kitchen knife, okay? It's just - practical, you don't have to get offended - "

"Did you just call me a kitchen knife?!" Stiles asks incredulously. "Besides being the oddest insult ever, yes Scott, you can consider me _offended._ "

"Stiles," Scott straight up _whines,_ "c'mon."

"I don't want to defend this to you for the millionth time," Stiles snaps, "I'm sick of defending myself, sick of _talking_ about it. I know you're worried about me and I appreciate it, I really do, and I love you to death and everything, but just back the hell off, okay? Seriously."

"Wow," Scott says after a beat. "That's, uh, reassuring."

"Scott, Jesus Christ - "

"Fine, fine. Gotcha loud and clear, buddy," Scott interrupts, sounding more than a little resentful. "No more talking. At least you guys are okay, that's the most important part."

Stiles takes a deep breath. "Yeah. So Lydia told you everything?"

"Boyd did," Scott replies. "She's been with them since you guys got back." Scott clears his throat. "Erica's, uh, not too happy, by the way."

"Really, because with all those texts she sent me about what a fuckwad I am, I thought she was putting me up for friend of the year."

Scott makes a sympathetic noise. "Just warning you," he says. "We're supposed to meet them at this warehouse downtown later. They think Derek was there, that day."

"Right. Text me the address, will you?"

"Sure." Scott pauses. "So, Jackson and this Alpha, you think they're..."

"Oh God," Stiles exclaims. "Gross! _Mental images_ , man, why - "

"No! Ew, dude, no, no," Scott says, "I meant can we _trust_ them, God."

"Jeez, you could've just _said_ that," Stiles complains. "And no. Probably not."

"Oh," Scott says. "Well. At least we're used to it."

"Yup," Stiles replies with a sigh, "there's that."

 

 

The 'warehouse' is actually an abandoned WinCo Foods that the city's been trying to sell to developers for over a year now. The fact that it still sits empty, unsold, and creepy as ever might have something to do with how it's also a crime scene, from a long-ago Alpha pack confrontation, which apparently drags the property value down just a tad. It's a common problem in this town, honestly - the old Hale mansion seems destined for "creepy haunted house urban legend" territory, too. 

Erica's BMW is parked behind the back entrance, so Stiles pulls up next to it and immediately experiences a full-body chill that he's come to associate with Very Bad Things. He'd attribute this to the music he's about to face, but more likely it's some serious magic leftovers. Or - both, maybe both. 

Scott's meeting up with them later at Melissa's, so it's just Erica and Boyd inside, lounging casually on giant piles of debris, because hanging out in horror movie settings is just the usual for them, obviously.

"Heyy, guys," Stiles says, grinning. "Miss me?"

"Hey, asshole," Erica chirps. "Not even a little."

"That hurts," Stiles replies, patting his chest, "hurts me here."

Erica's faux-cheerful expression melts away into pure, feral annoyance. "You - "

"Erica," Boyd says, a powerful rumble that makes both her and Stiles jump. "Guys - can we just skip this part? We're all annoyed with everyone else, that's established."

Erica huffs. "Sure, why not. Keeping big-time secrets and running around getting into trouble for no reason - no big deal."

"Wow, okay," Stiles says, "which of us in this room were the ones not returning voicemails? Sure as hell wasn't _me._ "

"He's right - Erica," Boyd says, interrupting whatever rebound was about to tumble out of Erica's mouth. "He's right, we were all doing it. We're not doing it now, that's the important part. Arguing about it isn't going to accomplish anything."

"It'll make me feel better," Erica snaps, but she makes a gesture at Boyd, then crosses her arms sullenly, which seems to be couple-speak for 'go ahead then,' if Stiles is interpreting correctly.

"Right," Boyd says, "Lydia told us everything, Stiles."

"Uh huh," Stiles replies warily. "Great."

"Yeah, great," Erica mutters.

"We'll talk about it later," Boyd continues, undaunted. "Right now we need to concentrate on getting Derek back."

"You - you guys believe me?" Stiles asks, truly taken aback. "Lydia doesn't even believe me and she was the one helping me."

"Lydia's not a werewolf," Boyd replies. For a second, Stiles sees him falter, and for Boyd, unflappable in the face of anything, Stiles knows it's equal to a truly epic freakout in anyone else. "We - nobody inherited his Alpha status."

"I know," Stiles says dumbly. "I thought...we weren't talking about it?"

"We weren't," Erica says shortly, "because it's been freaking us the fuck out."

"...oh," Stiles says.

"It's not supposed to happen," Boyd croaks, "it's - unnatural, and we didn't know - we weren't dealing with it very well."

Stiles stays quiet, thinking abruptly of his lunch with Isaac at the sandwich shop, the unhinged edge to their conversation that'd nagged at him for days afterward.

"Anyway," Boyd says, taking a deep breath, "it just, it makes sense. And if there's even a chance..."

"He's pack," Erica finishes fiercely. "More than that. He's _Alpha._ We can't abandon him. We _won't._ "

_Not again,_ Stiles hears, loud and clear. It's written all over their faces.

"So," Boyd says, loud in the ensuing silence, "we know what you've got. Why don't we show you what we've got?"

Something warm and strong unfurls in Stiles' chest, a root that before was only barely hanging on to life. He feels a little lightheaded, because wow, _wow,_ apparently he really needed somebody to believe him, something he didn't quite realize until this moment.

"Alright," he says, "I'm down. Show me."

Boyd inclines his head once, standing smoothly in that 'knight of the realm' way he has. "It's back here," he says, and gestures to the front of the store, where the sunlight is only barely visible through the years of grime and graffiti. 

"We were tracking his movements that day," Erica says as they walk, still with that barely-controlled fury sitting right beneath the surface, although Stiles suspects that that's more Erica's default setting right now, rather than the result of any of his recent activities. "Remember? We figured out that he'd been here - we got ahold of some security camera footage that puts his car going south on Vine Street at four o'clock, and we found the Camaro's tire tracks in the dirt up front, in-between the parking lot and the street."

Stiles nods, picking his way carefully across the junk-ridden floor. "He was supposed to be searching the north woods," he says, "right? That's what he told you guys?"

"Yup," Erica says, popping the 'p', tilting her head in Stiles' direction. "Weird that he'd take a detour to the complete opposite side of town then, isn't it."

Four o'clock, Stiles thinks, and remembers suddenly the voicemail, that sound of Derek's shoes on a hard floor - this floor, he realizes with a pang. 

"We think this is why," Boyd says, stopping by what looks like the remnants of a checkout counter, dilapidated and covered in spray paint. Crouching down, Boyd runs a hand across the filthy floor. "You see this?"

Stiles squints in the semi-dark. "What - oh." He stops short, suddenly breathless. 

"Just like the woods," Erica says quietly, shaking her head and shuffling a jagged piece of wood out of the way with the side of her foot. "Just like - fuck."

Stiles stares, kind of enthralled by the sight - a circle, scorched into the cement, the same kind as the one that they're all picturing in their heads. Derek's circle.

Boyd clears his throat, brushing his hand off on his jeans and standing up, frowning deeply. "It's recent," he says, voice hoarse. "We thought - well, before we found out about that journal from Deaton, we thought that it was a first attempt. That Derek escaped this one, and they caught up to him later, in the forest. But now..."

"This was where it happened," Stiles says, more to himself than Boyd or Erica. Then, louder, "guys, there's major mojo in this place. I felt it as soon as I pulled up. This had to have been where he summoned them, to make the trade for Lydia."

"You're just mentioning that now?" Erica says, face twisting into a scowl. Boyd makes a noise, deep in his throat, and she shuts her mouth with a snap, looking up at the ceiling. 

"Why here?" Stiles asks, still mostly talking to himself. "Where would he have gotten the spell?"

"It's secluded," Boyd offers, "nobody comes into this place. There are no houses around, just office buildings, which would've been deserted on a Sunday afternoon. It's contained, too - if he knew the spell contained fire, there's no way he would've done it in the woods. Better for this place to burn down than half the forest."

"But how did he know what it was?" Erica asks. "Like, when Lydia disappeared, how did he immediately know that it was _fairies_ , of all things?"

"He must've found something, seen something," Stiles reasons. "So - he went out once, right, in the morning? Then he came back, at noon, and left again - to come _here._ So whatever he did that morning, whatever he found - "

"We don't know where he went," Boyd interrupts. "We tried, but - he was alone, and the rest of us were all over, looking for Lydia - he's better than us at covering his tracks. It was pure luck we figured this much out, even."

"There's no way of knowing, then," Erica determines, "where he got the spell, either, unless Deaton gave it to him and isn't telling us - "

"I don't think so," Stiles interrupts. "He seemed...I dunno. I don't think so."

"His family?" Boyd suggests. "They had a huge bestiary. You've seen all those books he had left over, and that was just what survived the fire. He knows all kinds of shit about everything, stuff his parents probably taught him..."

Stiles thinks, not for the first time, about what it'd be like to have a conversation with Laura Hale. Just for a minute, a second, even. There's not much he wouldn't give. "The details don't matter," he says decisively, "we're not going to figure them out anyway, not unless..."

"He tells us?" Erica says. She sounds a little frantic, her expression going a little wild around the edges. 

Boyd steps forward and grabs her forearm, lifting it to place a careful kiss on Erica's wrist, right below her sleeve. "That's the goal," he says steadily, and Erica sways in his direction, arm going slack in his grip. 

Stiles smiles awkwardly, acutely aware that of his intrusion on this moment. "We'll kick his ass first," he jokes, "then he can explain."

Erica snorts, bringing her free hand up to her face and turning away. Boyd keeps ahold of her arm. 

"Uh, anyway, we can do the summoning spell here. The leftover juice will probably make it go smoother anyway." Stiles clears his throat, keeping his eyes averted away from the circle, not that it isn't already burned into his retinas. "Palakiko's due in town tomorrow night."

"We need to decide who's gonna be there," Boyd says. "Lydia will want to, but - "

"No," Erica says sharply. 

"Hey, no argument here," Stiles says. "I'm gonna let you handle that conversation, though."

"The less people, the better," Erica says. "This Alpha, we don't know who she is, what she wants. Just because _Jackson_ trusts her - well, we don't trust him. We didn't even _before_ he faked his own death."

"You know he might be coming," Stiles says carefully. "Are you guys - I mean, you're not gonna - "

Erica presses her lips together tightly, and Boyd just nods, once. "It's fine," he says dismissively. "We'll be fine."

"Right," Stiles agrees, not really believing them, but without much of a choice otherwise.

"Besides," Boyd says, face set in stony determination, "all that matters now is getting him back. That's what we have to focus on. The rest can come later." Erica nods faintly in agreement, and Stiles watches their hands slide together, clasping so naturally, like they were made to hold each other. Which, Stiles supposes, they were.

"Right," Stiles says again, his throat dry. Suddenly, it's very hard to look at them, standing there in the dust, so intense and hopeful and strong. "Thanks, you guys. I appreciate this, a lot."

Erica rolls her eyes. "You fucking better," she says.

 

 

Melissa still works the night shift, Stiles knows, so she's long gone by the time the three of them make it to the McCall's, but Lydia - and Allison, surprisingly - are waiting on the porch. They stand up when Stiles pulls up in the truck, Boyd and Erica right behind him in the BMW.

"You saw it?" Lydia calls to him, not even waiting until he makes it all the way up the steps. "Crazy, right?"

"Yeah, Lydia," Stiles says tiredly. He nods to Allison, standing silently behind Lydia. She nods back. "I saw it."

Lydia shakes her head, muttering something Stiles can't quite make out, and takes off down the steps without another word, aimed directly for Boyd and Erica. Stiles lets her go.

"So," he says. 

Allison smiles. "So," she repeats, holding out her arms. Stiles steps into them without hesitation. "Hi," she murmurs softly, speaking it into his shoulder. Stiles shuts his eyes against it. 

"Hi," he says back. His voice breaks a little, and Allison squeezes him a little tighter. 

He's not sure how long they stay there, but when he finally pulls back the muscles in his lower back ache from bending over, so it must've been at least a little ridiculous. Allison doesn't look like she minds.

"Where's Scott?" he asks, rubbing one hand over his face.

"Went out for food with Isaac," Allison responds. Glancing out to the front yard, she shakes her head slightly, smiling ruefully. "They might be awhile," she comments wryly. Whether she's referring to Scott and Isaac, or the angst triplets, Stiles doesn't know. "Inside?"

Stiles nods and lets her take his arm to lead him into the house, taking the opportunity just to look at her, to catalogue the changes that have appeared in the time since he last saw her. She looks more settled into herself, gained a little weight that softens up all her angles, and it seems like she's lost that awful shroud of despair that she used to carry around all the time, even when she was all smiles on the outside. She's wearing this soft-looking sundress, a far cry from the severe jeans/combat boots/gloves combos she sported all through college, and he also catches a glimpse of a tattoo on the back of her neck, a quick flash of bright green and blue beneath her hair, shorter than he's ever seen it before.

"Been awhile," Allison comments, leading him into the kitchen and reaching into the fridge for a bottle of water. She tosses one to him first, then opens a second one for herself, swinging the door shut with her foot and leaning back against the counter. "I tried calling you a couple times, but..."

"Sorry," Stiles says, leaning on a counter across from her and fiddling nervously with his own bottle. He can't say he hasn't thought some pretty uncharitable thoughts about her in the past few months, very few of which she actually deserved, and he feels the pressure of all of them right now. "I was - not really in a great place."

"Yeah." Allison nods, face unreadable. "Scott's been pretty worried."

Stiles makes a face and swigs the water, a convenient stalling tactic. He suspects that's why she gave it to him - she's always been sort of sneakily nice like that.

"It's cool, I mean," she shakes her head, "I'm not mad, I just wanted to...make sure you were okay, I guess. Let you know I was around, if you needed me."

"I knew that," Stiles says. He did know, he just...didn't need her.

Allison already knows that, judging by the look on her face. "Well," she says, shrugging. "I'm glad you're alright now." Her voice lifts upwards at the end slightly, like she'd meant it as a question, but couldn't commit to it all the way - Stiles knows the feeling. 

"Yeah," Stiles says, not without some humor, "gonna have to let you know on that one."

Allison smiles, close-lipped, like she's trying not to but can't help herself. "Uh huh."

"I really am sorry," Stiles says sincerely, "for not - visiting, or whatever. It's - you're my friend, and I shouldn't have..."

"It's okay," Allison says briskly, shaking her head. "I get it, it's fine. We're cool." She laughs slightly. "It's - it feels stupid or something to say this, but I really am sorry. I wasn't - I mean, I know he and I didn't get along, exactly, but he wasn't a bad guy, and I..." she trails off, shrugging helplessly, this look on her face like, _what can I say?_

"Wow," Stiles says, straight-faced, "you should've written his eulogy."

"Oh, shut up," Allison sputters, face splitting into a grin. "Now _that_ was disrespectful."

"Whatever," Stiles says, "what's he gonna do about it? Punch me?"

Allison snorts, covering her mouth with one hand. 

"Gallows humor," Stiles says sagely. "Or - graveyard humor? I forget."

"Please don't ever change," Allison says, voice tight with suppressed laughter. Her cheeks are flushed slightly from her efforts. 

"I'll do my best," Stiles says. Allison shakes her head at him. 

"If you want me to stay, I'll stay," she says after a beat, sobering slightly. "If you want me to go, I'll go. Same goes for Scott. This is - it can be private, between you guys only, if you need it to be."

Stiles only barely restrains himself from groaning. "Look," he barks, "Derek bought a house, you know? It has seven rooms. Do the math."

Allison's mouth snaps shut, eyes widening beneath her bangs. 

"I know you and he weren't BFFs or anything," he continues, "but - c'mon, Allison. We're too old for that shit."

"Seven rooms?" Allison repeats. "Seriously?"

Stiles shrugs silently. 

"Wow," she says, sounding kind of shell-shocked.

"I would've thought Scott told you."

"Scott is - _Scott,_ " Allison answers, exasperated. "He'll tell me what he had for lunch in excruciating detail and then forget to mention that he got shot by a deer hunter on his morning run. Like, 'oh not a big deal, I healed anyway!' _Please_."

Stiles coughs on a mouthful of water, eyes watering with laughter. "Oh, God."

"He's a dork," Allison says fondly, tossing her water bottle on the counter and moving to lean next to Stiles, bumping her shoulder against his companionably. "So are you, you know."

"Over a year it's been since we've seen each other, and I get insults? Nice, Allison. Nice."

"What can I say, you bring out the worst in me," Allison says, threading her arm through his, like she's about to escort him down the aisle or something. "Seven rooms, huh?"

"Seven rooms."

"Huh," she says thoughtfully, laying her head on his shoulder. "How about that."

 

 

Erica, Boyd and Lydia come in after awhile, red-eyed and all looking rather devastated, and Allison just _springs_ into action, corralling them into the living room and flipping on Adult Swim, volume turned all the way up.

"Yeah, that's what we need right now, Family Guy reruns," Erica drawls, and Allison shoots her a severe look. 

"Scott's bringing Chinese," she says, "and guys, you're gonna eat all of it. _All_ of it. Lydia, I know you weren't that skinny two months ago."

Lydia just snorts, sitting there looking superior, which is still an improvement, in Stiles' opinion.

" _And,_ " Allison continues, undaunted, "there will be no discussion of fairies or Alphas or fire circles or spells or _anything,_ from this point on until the end of the evening. Capiche?"

"What are you gonna do, send us to our rooms?" Erica sneers.

"No, but I might shoot you," Allison says unrepentantly.

Stiles eyes her warily. "You seem oddly serious about that."

"Don't I look serious?" Allison asks grimly. 

"Point taken," Boyd says. 

The first twenty minutes or so are somewhat tense, but at some point into the second episode, somebody cracks and laughs at a joke, and then Boyd starts repeating the lines along with the show, completely deadpan, and Allison giggles so hard she almost falls off her chair. Lydia gets up with a flourish and declares Family Guy unworthy of her time and attention and changes it to the Science Channel, which results in lots of loud and mostly meaningless arguing, and by the time Isaac and Scott show up, nobody looks devastated anymore. 

"Wow, okay," Scott says, walking in with his arms full of awesome-smelling paper bags, "do I have the right house?" Isaac walks up behind him, similarly laden down, and quirks a judgmental eyebrow at the entire scene.

"Hi there, welcome, Allison can update you on the rules," Stiles says, "hand over the orange chicken in the meantime, okay? Okay, good."

"Jeez," Isaac comments, setting his load on the coffee table and backing out of the way quickly as Erica and Stiles descend on it eagerly. "You'd think you guys haven't eaten in years."

Erica looks up and says something incomprehensible through a mouthful of lo mein. Boyd snorts with laughter next to her.

"Ew," Lydia comments. "Erica, babe, not attractive."

Erica swallows half of her noodles and glares at her. "Go get me a fork then, _babe._ "

"Two forks," Stiles says, weighing whether it's worth it to wait for utensils or just dig in with his fingers, because holy shit he's hungry. "Or - lots of forks. Just bring the whole drawer."

"You're all barbarians," Lydia declares, crossing her arms. 

"'Thank you for dinner, Scott,'" Scott says, unloading his own armful and plopping down next to Allison, who smirks and slides her arm around his shoulders. "'That was really nice of you especially since we're all a bunch of vacuums and you had to spend a _hundred and fifty bucks -_ '"

"You still owe me fifty," Isaac says, curling up on the floor by the coffee table.

"Twenty," Boyd says.

"Forty-five," Allison chimes in.

Scott makes a face. "Oh, yeah."

"Are we giving up on the forks?" Stiles reminds them. "I'm seriously about to just bury my face in this right now."

"Erica's like ten steps ahead of you," Boyd says, grinning. 

Erica pauses inhaling her carton of noodles momentarily, fingers smeared with sauce. "Wha'?" Isaac and Boyd burst out laughing in tandem. "Ugh, shut up, both of you."

"Chopsticks!" Stiles says triumphantly, producing an entire pile out of one of the discarded bags. "Score."

"Gimme," Lydia says, joining them on the floor and reaching for a carton of beef and broccoli. Sniffing at it delicately, she wrinkles her nose. "How many calories do you think is in this?"

"Oh, please," Erica says, scooting up next to her and planting a huge, greasy kiss on her jaw, "you're ridiculous, Lyd, just eat it."

"Don't call me Lyd!" Lydia snaps, wiping at her face, but she's smiling. "Ugh, God, that was gross, somebody get me a napkin." Boyd hands one over, grinning fondly. 

"No PDA at the dinner table," Isaac says, mouth full.

"No more talking - or kissing! - with your mouth full," Lydia counters, glaring at Allison and Scott, who are being disgusting and feeding each other dumplings on the couch. 

"If we're adding to the rules, I'm going to have to pitch in a 'no shrill ordering about' one, because seriously," Stiles says, wincing and exaggeratedly rubbing at his ear, "really? Ow." Lydia shoves him. "Ow again! Does anybody see this _abuse -_ "

"Shut up, Stiles," Lydia and Boyd say in unison, both of them stopping short to grin at each other. 

"Ugh," Isaac says. 

"I think Isaac needs a girlfriend," Allison says, laughing. Isaac makes a face. "Boyfriend? Pet? Crafty hobby?"

"I thought lurking creepily was his hobby," Erica says innocently.

"You all suck," Isaac complains, scowling at all of them. "What about Stiles? He's got a secret girlfriend that he hasn't told us about," he says accusingly. "What's her name, Betty?"

Stiles and Lydia glance at each other once and collapse into laughter. 

"What?" Isaac asks. On the couch, Allison and Scott exchange a look, shaking their heads in tandem. 

"Nothing," Stiles tells him, leaning forward into the circle and smiling so widely his face aches, "nothing at all."

 

 

_Hey Derek,_

_Does that make letters seem less awkward, when you address them casually like that? Like we're already in the middle of talking? Yo, what's up. Nice jacket. Caught your game Friday night, sweet goal. Yeah? No?_

_Do you remember those letters that Mom kept in her dresser, the ones she never let us look at? I snuck into her room once and read one, I don't think I ever told you. It was from Dad, of course (who else would they be from?) and it was addressed like that: "Hey, Talia!" With the exclamation point and everything. And it was so dorky, God, he must've been so young when he wrote it. He talked about such random shit, too, nothing that meant anything. I was disappointed at the time, because I'd been hoping for something scandalous. An ex-boyfriend or an illegitimate child, or something. As if Talia Hale would've done anything illegitimately._

_I've been thinking about them a lot, you know? I know you don't want to talk, but I know you read these. You don't have to talk. You don't have to do anything. Fuck, I don't even care if you listen, I guess. As long as you let me talk, it's okay. It'll always be okay._

_I know we weren't exactly friends growing up. I was jealous of you, to be honest, everything seemed to come so easily to you. Friends, lacrosse, control, dealing with all the secrets. It never seemed to bother you. I used to think you were such a brat, that you were spoiled or self-centered, or something. I resented the fact that you didn't seem to realize how bad we had it - like I had any idea of what that even meant, back then. It was stupid anyway, like, of course it was hard for you like it was for me, you're just better at hiding it than I am. I never caught onto that until recently._

_I want to do better, like, I have to be better. There's no other choice now, is there? I need to be a good sister, a good Alpha. I'll try as hard as I can, but I'm going to need your help. ~~Please~~_

_It's easier to write all this down than it would be to say it to you. ~~I just want you to get better~~ I'm sorry if that makes me a coward or whatever. It's just easier to talk about stupid things when I'm visiting, and it seems like it helps you too? I hope. You'd tell me if you wanted me to talk for real, right? Like you'd give me a sign somehow?_

_Anyway. I'm going to keep writing, every day if that's what it takes. And don't think I won't visit, too. You're gonna be sick of me by the time we get you out of there._

_Love you. xoxo, L._

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, big big shout out to jerakeen and moon-ridden for helping me out with this one. They are so spectacular. <3
> 
> Second: yes, it's a WIP. My tentative posting schedule is every Wednesday, but please bear with me. I'm still in the process of writing, although rest assured I do have about half of the story done already.
> 
> See [here](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Presumed_Dead) for some (spoilery) reassurance about that "major character death" tag.
> 
> Note that warnings/tags will change as the story progresses.


End file.
